Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, said Monday that President Donald Trump’s “golden age” is working for “his billionaire donors” while “everyone else is paying more and getting less.” Boyle posted the statement on X at 2:08 p.m. on Oct. 19, responding to a new think tank analysis of the administration’s economic policies.
What Boyle Wrote
Trump promised Americans a “golden age.”
It’s a golden age for his billionaire donors — but everyone else is paying more and getting less.
He’s cutting your health care, raising your taxes with his tariffs, and stealing from the poor to fund tax breaks for billionaires.
The Report Boyle Was Responding To
USA Today reported that an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), a left-leaning think tank, found Trump’s economic policies have raised taxes and costs for all but the wealthiest 1% of Americans. The report found a typical middle-income household will pay about $1,700 more in 2026, the poorest 20% about $750 more, and the top 1% $12,560 less.
The Oct. 8 report examines three areas: tax provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the expiration of enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits, and price increases tied to tariffs, the Iran war and immigration actions. For a middle-income household, ITEP estimated about $380 in new tax savings, $1,850 in higher costs from price-increasing policies and $230 from the expired health credits.
For the top 1%, ITEP estimated inflationary policies will cost an extra $15,990 while new tax cuts will save $28,550, a net savings of $12,560. ITEP’s Steve Wamhoff said the point is to show how Americans experience the economy, adding that most people “do not notice the extension of a tax break” already in effect.
The report noted a dispute over scoring. White House spokesman Matthew Middleton said Trump’s agenda “has stopped” Biden’s inflation crisis and driven growth. If the extension of 2017 tax cuts is counted as a Trump policy, the report said, all but the lowest-income Americans saved on taxes, a point ITEP acknowledges in an appendix. Analysts at the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute questioned parts of the analysis, though Cato’s Adam Michel agreed “tariffs are tax increases.”
Boyle’s Record on Taxes, Tariffs and Health Care
Boyle voted no on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on July 3, 2025, when the House passed it 218-214 with no Democratic support. After the Senate passed it, he said Republicans wanted “to strip health care from nearly 17 million Americans,” and that the bill would add trillions to the deficit “so Republicans can give billionaires a massive tax break.”
In an April 2025 statement on Trump’s first 100 days, Boyle said Republicans were pushing a budget with the largest Medicaid cuts in history to bankroll tax breaks for billionaires and large corporations. He said Trump’s tariffs were “driving up prices on everything from groceries to household goods.”
Boyle helped champion a discharge petition that forced a House vote on extending the enhanced ACA credits. After the House passed a three-year extension on Jan. 8, 2026, he said hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvania families faced average premium increases of 102 percent without the credits. In March, he said extending them for a year would have cost about $30 billion.
On tariffs, Boyle said in a Feb. 24, 2026, statement after the State of the Union that Trump’s tariffs “amount to a national sales tax on working families.” In February, when his committee launched a website with district-level cost data, he said, “Donald Trump promised to lower prices on day one.” He added, “He lied.”
On July 16, Boyle offered an amendment in the Budget Committee markup to reverse the Medicaid cuts in the 2025 law. Republicans rejected all 14 Democratic amendments, including one to permanently extend the ACA credits. If Democrats win the House, Boyle is in line to chair the committee and has said reversing the Medicaid cuts would be a priority.