The US vice-president, JD Vance, previewed in Georgia on Thursday the lines of attack candidates will use to defend the president’s signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act in the midterms next year, calling it “the biggest tax cut for families that this country has ever seen”.
Vance touted an increase in the child tax credit, the elimination of taxes on overtime and on tips in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act while speaking in a warehouse for ATLA Refrigeration in Peachtree City, Georgia.
Vance did not mention that only the first $25,000 of tips will be tax free and will require itemization to claim, something few service workers do because the standard deduction usually provides a larger benefit. Eliminating overtime taxes also applies to the first $12,500 of a filer’s overtime income, phasing out at $150,000 of income. The increase in the child tax credit is $200 a child under 17 to $2,200, which will now be indexed to inflation.
The event also served as a preview of the attacks Jon Ossof, the Georgia Democratic senator, will face in the bruising swing state battle to come next year.
Related: JD Vance booed during hamburger handout to national guard troops in DC
The White House paired Vance’s appearance with an information blitz on the “working families” tax cut. Ossoff would come to regret voting against the bill, Vance said.
“In about a year, you are not going to be able to turn on the television without Senator John Ossoff pretending that he supported the working families tax cut, when in reality he voted against them,” Vance said.
Vance extolled the virtues of the federalization of policing in Washington DC, and spoke at length about making places like Atlanta “safe” for out-of-town visitors to its downtown attractions.
“The compassionate thing is to have people who are having mental health crises to get them in treatment, not to let them sit on the streets and yell at our people while they’re walking,” Vance said, when asked where federal agents were taking people swept up from encampments in the nation’s capitol.
“The president actually signed an executive order to make it easier for some of these people to get access to mental health treatment. And I don’t know for the life of me what happened in this country where we decided that the compassionate thing was to let somebody fester on the streets instead of getting them treatment. And I don’t know why we accept it as parents and grandparents, as people who just want to walk down the street in comfort, why we accepted that it was reasonable to have crazy people yelling at our kids.”
Vance also rejected observations that the bill would throw people out of their healthcare plans.
“The President of the United States made a promise, a sacred promise, that the only people who are going to lose access to healthcare are illegal aliens who shouldn’t be in this country in the first place,” he said. “I happen to believe that when you are struggling in this country, we’re a generous people. We want to help you, or we want to help the people who have the legal right to be in the United States of America. So it’s not about kicking people off of health care. It’s about kicking illegal aliens the hell out of this country to preserve healthcare in America.”
Comprehensive Medicaid benefits have never been available to undocumented immigrants.
The budget bill cuts $1tn from Medicaid spending, beginning in 2027. About 17 million people are expected to lose health insurance by 2034 across the country if the provisions remain as enacted, according to estimates from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. Nearly 12 million people will lose insurance because of attacks on Medicaid.
Nonetheless, a roster of speakers addressed the party faithful from the stage, three of whom – the Georgia representatives Buddy Carter and Mike Collins, and Derek Dooley, the former Tennessee football coach, – are candidates for the US Senate, vying for a face-off with Ossoff.
Dooley is a political newcomer with the endorsement of both Trump and Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp. He likened his political outsider status to that of Trump, who “didn’t accept business as usual up there. And look at the results we got.”
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