“There’s a lot out there, that … this is just tax breaks for the billionaires on the backs of the working class. And it’s fundamentally false,” Moore said during a forum hosted by the Sutherland Institute, a conservative think tank, at the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics in Salt Lake City on Monday. “It’s a good line to be able to spew, but it’s not accurate.”

On cuts to Medicaid due to new work requirements and other provisions impacting the Affordable Care Act, Moore said criticisms are “overblown” and defended the moves by saying that Republicans want to “keep that culture of work associated with our social programs.”

He also said estimates that more than 10 million Americans are at risk of losing health care coverage over the next 10 years are “faulty.”

“I don’t think those numbers are going to be even close to that,” Moore said.

He argued that “a very small portion of the population” falls into “able-bodied, no-dependent” demographics that are at risk of losing health care coverage due to the new federal work requirements. Even still, he said, “they can all work to become eligible.”

Moore — who is also a member of U.S. House GOP leadership as vice chair of the House Republican Conference — spent the majority of Monday’s hourlong forum defending Congress’ passage of the megalaw while also arguing that Republicans are confident the U.S. economy will grow faster than the Congressional Budget Office predicted when it estimated the bill would add a cumulative $4.1 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.

The CBO assumed a 1.8% growth rate for those estimates, but Moore said Republicans in Washington, D.C. are confident the economy will see a growth rate closer to 2.6% annually.

The CBO estimates are widely accepted as the most official projections of the megalaw’s impacts, and Moore said that’s “totally fair, but we think that those aren’t necessarily accurate” based on economic growth trends since 2017.

According to a June 2026 post about the economic impact from the “big, beautiful” law, the Tax Foundation, a nonpartisan, Washington-based policy group, wrote President Donald Trump’s administration has “claimed the combined policies would lead to much stronger economic growth of about 3 percent per year, versus 1.8 percent under the baseline, sufficient to offset the fiscal cost of the bill.”

“Economic forecasters do not see such a sustained economic boom on the horizon but instead expect an economic slowdown this year, due in part to the administration’s tariffs, and then a return to something like baseline growth thereafter,” wrote William McBride, chief economist at the Tax Foundation. “While the tariff proposals continue to evolve, our estimates indicate they would generally offset much of the economic and fiscal impacts of OBBB while they are in place.”

Moore says ‘big, beautiful’ law isn’t just for billionaires. Here’s what the numbers say

Critics of the megabill, including Democrats, have blasted it as a tax and spending package that will disproportionately benefit the rich while also cutting resources for the poor.

Moore, pushing back on that criticism, focused on the tax cut provisions of the bill. He argued that billionaires can’t take advantage of the bill’s child tax credit or standard deduction benefits because those benefits are capped at certain income levels.

“The vast majority of the provisions of this tax bill go to benefit middle- and low-income Americans, from the child tax credit to the standard deduction,” he said.

Taking the new law as a whole, however, CBO estimates also factor in other impacts from the bill, including cuts to Medicaid and and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. They concluded the bill, taken holistically, will shift resources away from the poor and toward middle- and higher-income earners.

In an Aug. 11 letter, CBO Director Phillip Swagel wrote that as a result of the megalaw, “U.S. households, on average, will see an increase in the resources available to them over the 2026-2034 period.” However, he added: “The changes in resources will not be evenly distributed among households.”

“The agency estimates that, in general, resources will decrease for households toward the bottom of the income distribution, whereas resources will increase for households in the middle and toward the top of the income distribution,” Swagel wrote.

The CBO estimated resources (including federal taxes and cash transfers, federal and state in-kind transfers, state fiscal response, and other revenues including federal spending on defense, border security and infrastructure) will, on average, increase for Americans with higher incomes but decrease for low-income households.

“Resources for households in the lowest decile (tenth) of the income distribution will decrease by about $1,200 per year (in 2025 dollars), on average,” the letter says, adding that amounts to 3.1% of their income.

That bracket includes Americans making about $24,000 a year or less.

“Those projected decreases are mainly attributable to reductions in in-kind transfers, such as Medicaid and SNAP,” Swagel wrote. “After those decreases, households in the lowest decile will receive about $6,000 in transfers, net of federal taxes paid, each year of the projection period.”

Middle-income households, however, in the fifth and sixth deciles — or those making up to $85,660 and $107,911, respectively — “will see their resources increase by $800 (or 0.8 percent of projected income) and $1,200 (or 1.0 percent of projected income), respectively,” Swagel wrote.

As for Americans in the highest decile, or those making more than $692,582 a year?

“Resources will increase, on average, over the projection period by about $13,600 annually,” Swagel wrote, amounting to 2.7% of their projected income, mainly due to tax cuts. He also noted that after those resource increases, the federal taxes paid by those high-income households, net of transfers, will be about $190,000 a year.

In a separate analysis, the Joint Committee on Taxation also estimated the effects of the tax provisions in the megalaw. That analysis shows that taxpayers making less than $15,000 will see a 9.3% increase in federal taxes in 2027, and by 2033, that increase will hit 56.1%. Those making $15,000 to $30,000, however, are slated to get a 21.5% tax cut in 2027, but by 2023, they will see a 4.6% increase.

Other tax brackets, including those making $30,000 and up, will see tax cuts. As a matter of percentage, the biggest cumulative cut of 8.9% by the year 2033 will go to those making $50,000 to $60,000.

While high-income earners will see the biggest returns in a total number of dollars, their tax cut as a percentage isn’t the highest. For example, those making $500,000 to $1 million will get a 7.9% tax reduction in 2033, while those making $1 million and up will see a 6% cut.

Utah News Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.