If you want to understand why more Americans find democracy less attractive these days, look at Congress’s handling of Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.

Polls show most of the public opposes the legislation. Its two primary attributes are that it increases the deficit by more than $3 trillion and cuts social safety net programs by upward of $1 trillion. Republicans are supposed to hate the former; Democrats, the latter. Nearly 60 percent of Americans say reducing the federal budget deficit should be a top priority, and more than 80 percent have a favorable view of Medicaid. But instead of dying in committee, the sweeping bill that defies both public opinion and the parties’ core ideologies passed Congress on Thursday, and Trump signed it into law at a White House ceremony featuring a military flyover and a crowing gaggle of politicians who claim to have the people’s mandate. Which part of this democratic process is supposed to be appealing?

There are nearly 100 million nonvoters in the United States, and the two most common reasons they give for opting out of elections are because they think their votes don’t matter and because they don’t like the candidates. That’s a familiar sentiment: I sat out elections for 15 years, thinking, What’s the point? They do whatever they want anyway. Democracy is less charming when there’s little faith that politicians will keep their word in a system that already feels unrepresentative. The real challenge, however, isn’t that campaign promises get broken; it’s that the transactional nature of politics means promises broken to one group are promises kept to another.

An unrepresentative government can be mistaken for an unresponsive one, but our democracy is always responsive — just usually not to the will of the people. In an influential study published in 2014, two political scientists considered nearly 2,000 policy cases over a 20-year span and found that when accounting for the influence of economic elites and organized business, “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.” A study two years later examined five decades of public opinion polling on policy issues appearing in major newspaper editorials, and the analysis showed that the public’s preference is mostly unrelated to what government ultimately chooses to do. There was one notable exception: In the case of issues that attract significant media attention, the passage of legislation is more likely when the public does not support them. In short, when our government wants something badly enough, concerns about obtaining the consent of the governed are only skin-deep.

A year ago, Trump posted to social media, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it.” His campaign-season disavowal followed the people’s lead: The policy agenda was unpopular with the public, too. At a town hall in Milwaukee, a Trump supporter told me he believed Democrats were fearmongering with exaggerated claims about Project 2025 and thought it ridiculous that Trump would adopt its provisions. Once elected, however, Trump selected the project’s architects for key roles in his administration and began implementing many of the project’s ideas. The voter in Milwaukee may feel betrayed by this, but other supporters are thrilled. The president’s signature legislation offers a clue to who they might be. The Congressional Budget Office determined that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will cause losses among the poorest Americans, mostly in cuts to Medicaid and welfare benefits, while economic elites and organized business interests will accrue gains by having their tax bills reduced.

Running as a champion for the wealthy and big business is a losing proposition, so presidential campaigns are often filled with populist sweet talk for persuadable voters. A democratic public generally understands that, even expects it. But once the election is decided, there’s no mechanism for voters to keep the president or congressional members true to their word. Our elected officials are left to police themselves and pursue any agenda they please. And as long as they can raise money and marshal partisan solidarity to remain in office, most pay no penalty for making policy choices that their supporters oppose and for running up taxpayers’ tabs in the process. The central flaw in our democracy isn’t that elected representatives don’t dance with the public who brought them, it’s that they routinely give big, beautiful gifts to people with lots of power — and leave the rest of us with the bill.

Most voters believe Congress is overdue for a makeover and that our democracy needs changes to its fundamental design and structure. Suggested reforms typically include measures such as ranked-choice voting, nonpartisan redistricting commissions to make elections more competitive, and taking legislative steps to reduce the influence of money in politics.

The goal of these actions isn’t to make the people’s will more attractive to elected officials but to refashion the republic to make it more representative. And to hamstring politicians from ignoring their constituents, holding them accountable when they do. Structural changes and tweaks to election regulations could incentivize better candidates to run for office and rebuild enough faith in government to get more nonvoters off the sidelines. But it will take a government that is more responsive to the will of the people to prove that democracy is more than just a pretty face.