PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • July 18, 2025
Watching the One Big Beautiful Bill Act pass 218-214, I felt a unique sense of dread from a dream being crushed. The bill eliminates the American dream for so many and will lead to deaths and an increasingly suffocating national debt. We should be securing federal dollars for communities like Millinocket, Madison and Saco, where investments in timber innovation will bring back thousands of jobs and strengthen one of our state’s key heritage industries, not frittering away government revenue on tax cuts that will force interest rates to rise and stagnate economic growth. Trump’s big bill is not just a policy failure, it is a moral one. It mortgages our future to further enrich those already obscenely wealthy, and tears at the fabric of what has made America exceptional. ~ Tommy Leggat-Barr, North Yarmouth, student at Brown University working this summer on Capitol Hill