The vice president visited a machine shop in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, to sell Trump’s new legislation to key voters.
Vice President JD Vance visited northeast Pennsylvania on July 16 to make the Trump administration’s first big pitch to voters on President Donald Trump’s tax cuts and budget legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Vance, who cast the tiebreaking vote in the Senate to send the bill to Trump’s desk on Independence Day, touted the legislation’s tax breaks and funding for energy production and a children’s savings program. He also cast Democrats as enemies of tax breaks, and thus of the working class, because none supported the legislation in Congress.
Democrats have criticized the legislation for its funding cuts and changes to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, and will likely use it as ammunition against Republicans next year in closely contested congressional races. One of those contests will likely occur in the same region of Pennsylvania that Vance visited on July 16.
“We worked so hard to get this legislation passed to cut your taxes, to prevent big tax increases, to make it easier to save and invest right here in this great country that all of us love,” Vance said while speaking at a machine shop in West Pittston, Pennsylvania.
The vice president also touted the legislation’s new tax deductions for overtime.
“Now, thanks to President Trump’s leadership, if you work overtime, the federal government is not going to take a dime of that overtime,” Vance said. “You earn that money, you ought to keep it in your pocket.”
The legislation created a new children’s savings program called Trump Accounts for babies born in the next four years, which could offer a $1,000 deposit from the Treasury Department and essentially function as a tax-deferred investment account in which parents can contribute up to $5,000 a year per child.
Once a child reaches 18, the money can be withdrawn to be used for a home down payment, for education, or to start a small business. But if it’s used for something else, it’s taxed at a higher rate.
Vance said the initial $1,000 could “compound and build something” over 18 years of accrued interest.
“When they are ready to start off on a new life … when they’re ready to start a small business or to go into higher education, they’ve actually got real wealth built right here in the United States of America,” he said. “And that’s thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill.”
By Jacob Burg
