The Republican tax bill is noticeably less geared toward the supply-side orthodoxy that has dominated the GOP for a generation, betokening an ongoing shift in the party toward populism that could accelerate after the Trump era.

Tax rate reductions and tax code simplification have been guiding principles of tax policy for Republicans since the time of President Ronald Reagan. Conservatives have long maintained that increasing the rewards to investment and labor can spur economic growth.

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But, while supply-siders are getting some of what they want with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the legislation also includes populist priorities and tax breaks meant to benefit specific subsets of voters, rather than boost overall production.

“I think you can see this schizophrenia that is currently going on in Republican economic policy,” Adam Michel, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, told the Washington Examiner.

On one hand, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act appeases the traditionalists in the party by making permanent the marginal tax cuts from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, long a priority of supply-siders who favored the lower rates passed during the tenure of former House Speaker Paul Ryan, a staunch supply-sider. The Senate version of the bill also makes permanent provisions that allow businesses to immediately write off the cost of investment in equipment and research, a longtime priority for growth-minded conservative tax writers.

But, on the other hand, the bill is full of additional provisions that could be broadly interpreted as populist and signal an evolution away from Wall Street economics in the Republican Party more broadly. Political figures such as President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) have helped usher in such a transition.

For instance, on the campaign trail, Trump emphasized plans to exempt taxes on tips, reduce taxes on Social Security benefits, and eliminate taxes on overtime — versions of which policies are included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. In the supply-side framework, those provisions do little to spur growth, but they do introduce new tax distortions into household decision-making.

The legislation also boosts the child tax credit and the child and dependent tax credit, a nod to populists long pushing for more government support for working-class families. Those measures, too, are generally not favored by supply-siders.

“Republicans used to want three things in tax policy — make it more simple, grow the economy, and be pro-family,” Alex Conant, a GOP strategist and a partner at Firehouse Strategies, told the Washington Examiner. “This bill certainly doesn’t do the first … it does a little bit of the second, it does a little bit of the third.”

The shift, in a sense, represents a return to some of the tax policies that last existed before the Reagan Revolution.

It has also been a marked change since 2017, when Ryan and former House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady worked to enact Trump’s first tax cut legislation.

That bill, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, was broadly in line with supply-side economics. It lowered rates across the board and eliminated some holes in the tax code, such as by capping deductions for state and local taxes.

To be clear, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is not a complete rejection of supply-side economics. In fact, it makes permanent many of those lower rates imposed in 2017.

“It’s not a corporate tax increase, it’s not like some fundamental reversal of Republican orthodoxy, either,” Alex Brill, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told the Washington Examiner.

Still, with the current trajectory of the GOP, it might be difficult to envision a 2017-style tax cut bill in the years after Trump is president.

For example, Vance, viewed as a top candidate to succeed Trump atop the party, would represent a sharper break with the supply-side economics of the Ryan-era GOP. Vance is much more amenable to trade restrictions and labor unions than Republicans have been in recent decades. He is a proponent of child tax credits but has been cool to the idea of a corporate rate reduction, and he was reportedly among the White House advisers open to a millionaires’ tax bracket.

A decade ago, there were very few Republicans in federal office with the populist leanings of Vance or Hawley. Now, it is very easy to imagine someone of that bent controlling the party after Trump.

“There may be, like, a reorienting of the emphasis away from rate reductions and towards other priorities,” Brill said.

Another threat to any future tax-cut program is the long-run mismatch between federal spending and revenues.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is likely to add trillions to the debt. To be sure, Republican congressional leadership and the Trump administration maintain that the full set of Trump’s policies will increase economic growth to such an extent that new revenues will be generated, in addition to the funds brought in by Trump’s tariffs.

Outside analyses, though, find that whatever growth the legislation spurs will not be anywhere near sufficient to offset the revenues. That includes studies done by think tanks with a supply-side perspective, such as the Tax Foundation.

Despite the shift toward populism, there have been some trying to pump the brakes.

HOW THE SENATE GOP TAX PLAN DIFFERS FROM THE HOUSE BILL

The business tax provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act could be seen as an example of that, according to Conant. He said concerns about the future direction of tax policy could be why so many senators pushed to make permanent provisions such as full expensing for new capital investment and immediate deductibility of domestic research and development costs.

“I think that there is concern that those become harder to defend as the party becomes more populist,” Conant said, “and you can see a future Republican president looking at the corporate rate and thinking that raising that a few points could pay for all sorts of populist priorities.”