Readers respond to the Question of the Week:

How beautiful is Trump’s big bill?

Trump’s big bill

The Congress has never passed a beautiful big bill that benefits all Americans. Politicians always identify big bills as having many good things and many bad things about them. Time will determine how beautiful or ugly they are, not predictions. Lifetime politicians know how to include provisions in a big bill in order to benefit wealthy donors and the lobbyists who work for them, ignoring the needs of the people they represent. In addition to not taxing tips or overtime to provide more money into families and working Americans’ pockets, charging a fee for immigrants seeking asylum protections is a fresh idea. Perhaps assets can be transferred from other departments to beef up border enforcement until immigration numbers are acceptable. To construct a protective dome over the United States, advanced technology would be necessary, such as AI and laser beams. Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are not going away.

— Stephen Lucas, Van Nuys

The BBB

The Democrats’ claim that the bill is a “tax break for the wealthy” is totally false. Nothing in the tax bill reduces the tax rates on reported taxable income. The lowest staying at 10% and highest at 37%.The bill does maintain those tax rates with deductions/credits established in 2017 and adds new income deductions benefiting taxpayers at all levels of income. Setting agency funding with qualifications are to one person tax cuts while another might say it is sound oversight of the spending of tax monies collected. Sadly, at the present tax rate with deductions there is not enough income in the U.S. to cover Congress’s spending without a deficit. Consider that, should each of the currently IRS-reported U.S. billionaires (913 of them) pay $2 billion this year in tax, the congressional budget deficit would still exist with our without the bill now approved.

— Ronald Dudeck, Moreno Valley

There’s good and bad in the bill

I think there is good and bad in the Big Beautiful Bill. Let us hope that a conference committee of both houses of Congress did get rid of the bad parts of the bill.

— Richard Metzger, Porter Ranch