Republicans were finally able to muscle the “One, Big Beautiful Bill” across the finish line today. Their only choices were to do nothing or to do something messy. If they went into the August recess without extending Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, the congressional calendar would have made it less likely for a reconciliation package to come together. Failing to extend those tax cuts would have resulted in significant hikes, and that would have meant the “Liberation Day” tariffs would have lingered in the economy without major new incentives for domestic investment.

It was a Catch-22 for the GOP. The only way to do anything, given their slim majorities, was a reconciliation package, and the reconciliation process was always going to involve compromises that kept moderates on board with populists. As Rep. Jim Jordan said yesterday on CNN: “This is probably as good as it’s going to get.”

Trump and the GOP leadership sweetened the deal by including substantial funding for immigration enforcement, meaning that the bill could practically be sold as border legislation. For the populists, the President’s no-tax-on-tips and no-tax-on-overtime proposals were included, along with baby bonuses and a boosted child tax credit. Fiscal hawks got work requirements for Medicaid, which were swallowed by New Right officials like Sen. Josh Hawley who were forced to conclude a flawed bill was still better than no bill.

But while the bill is a clear political win for Donald Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, it still leaves them with ownership of a massive piece of legislation that is projected to increase the debt and pays for tax cuts that ultimately benefit wealthy Americans more than other brackets, while making cuts to Medicaid.

The Economist put it well by arguing the OBBB “sutures to a body of government-shrinking Reaganism an appendage of populist Trumpism, both disfigured by carve-outs and fillips for individual lawmakers.” This bill is the manifestation of a party lurching through a transformation, saddled with the baggage of the past and present all at once, forced to balance both. The bill does not represent a coherent populism or coherent austerity. It’s a little bit of both, just enough to keep everyone happy, and just enough to make everyone mad.

While the chattering class is acting like Republicans had a choice, they painted themselves into a corner slowly over the course of a decade. There is nothing significant to be done about the national debt in one bill, though Elon Musk seemed to get the wrong impression that Trump would usher in a new era of fiscal responsibility with slim majorities in Congress. There is no world in which the White House could pass a Vance-endorsed populist’s dream bill without the makeup of the Senate being greatly altered.

At the end of the day, the one factor that manages to unite almost every Republican in Congress is Donald Trump. As soon as the deal got his stamp of approval, the party leadership had what it needed to start winding down the clock. The operating ideology of the GOP is whatever the President needs it to be.

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Emily Jashinsky is UnHerd‘s Washington correspondent.

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