The Pro-Growth Provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Jonathan Williams on American Radio Journal

President Donald Trump’s signing of The One Big, Beautiful Bill Act on July 4 offers far more than a great patriotic headline. It provides hardworking American taxpayers with long-term tax relief and provides the American economy an incredible boost through lower tax rates on small businesses.

While opponents reflexively brand tax relief as a giveaway to the, quote, unquote, rich, the facts tell a very different story.

At the heart of the legislation is the permanent extension of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—also known as the Trump tax cuts—a reform that opponents confidently predicted would usher in fiscal doom. Instead, it delivered broad-based tax relief and ignited economic growth, all while fueling record federal tax collections in the following years.

The average American taxpayer saw more than $2,000 in annual tax relief. That isn’t a theoretical benefit. That’s groceries. That’s mortgage payments, college tuition, and the opportunity for a much-needed vacation that otherwise might have been out of reach.

That’s money earned and utilized by the American people—not siphoned off to bureaucrats in Washington.

Much of the criticism of the tax relief, as usual, focuses on how the government will “pay” for these tax cuts, quote, unquote, as if the money belonged to the federal government in Washington in the first place.

Well, it doesn’t. The federal government has never created wealth. It merely redistributes the wealth created by others.

By allowing individuals and businesses to keep more of what they produce, the 2025 One Big, Beautiful Bill—or OBBB—strengthens the very incentives that drive investment, productivity, and job creation.

Most importantly, the majority of the pro-growth changes in the bill are permanent. Taxpayers, families, small business owners, and entrepreneurs can now plan for the long term without bracing for the rug to be pulled out from under them every few years due to arcane budgeting rules from the United States Senate.

The doubling of the standard deduction, for instance, simplifies tax filings for millions, as roughly 90% of Americans now take the simplified standard deduction when they file their taxes instead of itemizing.

The bill also restores deductions for small businesses, 100% bonus depreciation, and immediate expensing for research and development costs. These are sometimes overlooked but powerful provisions for job creators across America.

Another key facet was the extended exemption from the hated death tax—a levy that penalizes and often destroys family-owned farms and businesses in the process.

Companies and entrepreneurs will now have more incentives to innovate, build, and create jobs here in the United States—rather than abroad.

While we’re on the subject of fairness, let’s consider the State and Local Tax deduction, or SALT. Before the 2017 tax cuts, high-income earners from high-tax states like New York and California could write off their bloated state tax bills, effectively passing the cost on to federal taxpayers in lower-tax states—and, by the way, lower-income taxpayers even in high-tax states.

The wisely formulated limits on the SALT deduction back in 2017 disrupted that arrangement, and the OBBB locks in those reforms with a $40,000 cap through 2030 and then a $10,000 permanent cap after that.

This was a significant victory—and a key argument made by more than 630 state legislators from 48 states who signed on to a recent ALEC letter addressing the need for principled tax reform.

But tax cuts without spending discipline are incomplete, and this legislation did not ignore that. It delivers $1.4 trillion in deficit reductions, including a long-overdue requirement that able-bodied, working-age adults on Medicaid either work, seek employment, engage in training, or volunteer work.

Critics predictably call this cruel. But cruelty lies not in expecting people to contribute—but in trapping them in systems that reward stagnation over work, opportunity, and earned success.

In the final analysis, the One Big, Beautiful Bill is more than just a legislative accomplishment. It’s a philosophical marker.

It affirms that prosperity is not engineered by planners in Washington—but by ordinary Americans pursuing their own goals, taking their own risks, and reaping their own rewards.

It says in clear terms—just as we document every year at the state level in our report, Rich States, Poor States—that freedom works.

The pathway to a thriving economy at the state and national level begins not with redistribution, but with free-market ideas that empower individuals with more economic opportunity.

Thank you to President Donald Trump, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, Speaker Mike Johnson, and the members of Congress who worked tirelessly to bring this needed tax relief to hardworking Americans.