The GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill” is rolling out in different ways across U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson’s home district—from steakhouse servers getting a tax break on tips to a community center where people line up for a free hot lunch as SNAP benefits are being cut.
In this rough-and-tumble corner of northwest Louisiana, where booms and busts have defined the oil rich region’s history, the legislation can be a bit of a mystery to voters going about their days ahead of the November election.
This is President Donald Trump country, and Johnson, who rode into office on the 2016 wave that elected the president the first time, is in no apparent danger as he seeks a sixth term in Congress.
But the tenor of conversations—at a candidate forum, at a data center open house, outside a grocery store—provides a snapshot of the grim outlook for the party in power. High gas and grocery prices, the war in Iran and the lingering sense of an uneasy new economic normal are all on voters’ minds.
“I remember when Trump said, ‘This Christmas, you’ll have one doll’—I didn’t get it,” said Katherine Ferguson, an attorney in Shreveport and mother of a teenager, after a recent community meeting downtown. “Now I get it.”
Republicans are campaigning on the big bill, what Johnson calls the largest tax cuts in American history. He hauled the package over the finish line last summer, a remarkable political achievement given the slim House majority.
“This is real money for real people,” Johnson said in Washington, as lawmakers headed home to campaign.
