Vance rolls into another battleground state as Trump’s ‘traveling salesman’ to promote key proposal
Vice President JD Vance is heading to a another crucial battleground state on Thursday, as part of his ongoing promotion of the sweeping GOP-crafted domestic policy package that narrowly passed through the Republican-controlled Congress earlier this summer.
But Vance’s stop at a steel-fabricating facility in Wisconsin comes as his boss, President Donald Trump, is urging Republicans to rebrand their efforts to sell the massive tax cuts and spending measure, which polls indicate isn’t popular with Americans.
The vice president will speak at a steel fabrication facility in La Crosse, Wisconsin. And he’ll also sit down for an interview with Fox News’ Will Cain, with much of what Vance says running at 4pm ET on “The Will Cain Show.”
He has promoted the measure, known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” over the past month during stops in his home state of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. All four states will hold crucial contests in the 2026 midterm elections, when the GOP aims to hold its House and Senate majorities.
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“President Trump is the chief messenger for the ‘Working Class Family Tax Cuts’ and Vance is his traveling salesman,” a longtime Trump adviser told Fox News on Thursday.
Vance’s efforts are part of a larger sales campaign so far this summer by Republicans to promote the package, which Trump signed into law at the White House on July 4.
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Trump for months has touted his “Big Beautiful Bill,” but at a cabinet meeting on Tuesday seemed to acknowledge the difficult sales job he and his party face.
“I’m not going to use the term ‘great, big, beautiful’ – that was good for getting it approved, but it’s not good for explaining to people what it’s really about,” Trump said.
And he described the package as a “major tax cut for workers.”
The measure is stuffed full of Trump’s 2024 campaign trail promises and second-term priorities on tax cuts, immigration, defense, energy and the debt limit.
It includes extending the president’s signature 2017 tax cuts – which were set to expire later this year – and eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay.
The shift in branding that Trump noted this week has already been reflected in Vance’s description of the measure.
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At his earlier stops on his tour, he called the package the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” But last week, in Georgia, the vice president referred to the measure repeatedly as the “Working Families Tax Cut.”
“We believe that if you’re busting your rear end every single day, the government ought to make it easier for you and not harder for you,” the vice president said at his Georgia stop, as he touted the tax cuts in the measure.
The package also provides billions for border security and codifies the president’s sweeping and controversial immigration crackdown.
And the new law also restructures Medicaid — the almost 60-year-old federal program that provides health coverage to roughly 71 million low-income Americans.
The changes to Medicaid, as well as cuts to food stamps, another one of the nation’s major safety net programs, were drafted in part as an offset to pay for extending Trump’s tax cuts. The measure includes a slew of new rules and regulations, including work requirements for many of those seeking Medicaid coverage.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the new law could result in roughly 10 million people losing health coverage, and $3.4 trillion added to the nation’s already massive federal deficit.
Democrats for months have repeatedly blasted Republicans over the social safety net changes. They charge it will gut Medicaid, forcing rural hospitals and nursing homes to close their doors.
“Rural hospitals were already on the brink of collapse thanks to Donald Trump, but now he has put the last nail in the coffin for rural hospitals with his billionaire budget bill,” Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair Ken Martin claimed.
But Vance and Republicans have pushed back.
The vice president last week argued the CBO’s estimates were “absolutely atrocious” and that the health care changes in the law were focused on “kicking illegal aliens the hell out of this country so that we can preserve health care for the American families who need it.”
While playing defense as they respond to Democrats’ attacks on the social safety net changes, Republicans are also on offense, targeting Democrats for voting against tax cuts.
“Republicans took action with President Trump to make America more affordable again, passing a Working Families Tax Cut, saving families thousands a year. Plus, no tax on tips and a tax cut on Social Security, benefiting workers and seniors,” the narrator said in ads last month from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC).
And spots this summer from One Nation, a public policy organization aligned with Senate Majority Leader John Thune, spotlighted that “America is back, thanks to President Trump and Leader John Thune’s Working Family tax cuts. Not tax on tips or overtime. Real relief for every American up early and home late.”
Democratic lawmakers who face rough re-elections next year are being targeted by Republicans for voting against the tax cuts. And the NRCC said on Thursday that new internal polling in battleground states “gives Republicans a decisive messaging advantage.”
Democrats dispute the GOP messaging.
“There is nothing in this bill that’s going to help hard-working Americans. Let’s be very clear, this is a giveaway to the richest people in our country,” Martin argued last month, in a Fox News Digital interview.
“We welcome the debate, because this is the debate that’s going to actually help us as a Democratic Party, build our coalition again and win elections,”
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