Republicans have sent their “One Big Beautiful Bill” to President Trump’s desk and it’s hard to overstate the consequences. Not only will the bill be one of the most regressive transfers of wealth from society’s poorest to its richest in recent memory, but it will also add trillions of dollars to our national debt and hurt our economy. By passing this obscene budget-busting bill with near-unanimous support from their members in Congress, Republicans have proven that their party’s deficit hawks have gone extinct.
According to analysis from the Yale Budget Lab, the bill’s deep cuts to safety-net programs such as SNAP and Medicaid will reduce annual incomes for the bottom 20% of Americans by roughly $700 per person. But the savings from these cuts won’t be used to pay down the national debt or improve the programs for the people who need them most — rather, they will help offset tax cuts that will increase average after-tax incomes for individuals in the top 1% by roughly $30,000. The bill also guts pro-growth investments in the clean energy transition while propping up coal production and other conservative special interests with new giveaways, such as expansive new aid for wealthy farmers and large tax deductions for whaling boats.
Despite the bill’s large cuts, it would add roughly $4.1 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years. Moreover, if ostensibly “temporary” policies in the bill are eventually made permanent without offset — as Republicans have made clear they had no trouble doing when writing this bill— the cost would swell to $5.5 trillion, making it more expensive than every COVID stimulus bill combined. This is not only the most expensive bill ever passed using the filibuster-proof reconciliation process, it is also the first one to permanently increase budget deficits outside the 10-year window. This unprecedented outcome was only possible because Senate Republicans effectively invoked the “nuclear option” to blow up budget enforcement mechanisms, which will open the floodgates for future Congresses to add trillions more to the national debt with barebones majorities.
The explosion of federal debt will have lasting consequences for Americans. In the short term, deficit spending by the federal government will increase by up to $632 billion in a single year, putting upward pressure on inflation rates that have remained stubbornly above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Increased government borrowing will also put upward pressure on already elevated interest rates, making everything from mortgages to car loans more expensive for ordinary families. Over the long term, higher rates will make it more expensive for businesses to finance new investments, slowing innovation and job creation. The federal government already spends roughly a trillion dollars each year on interest payments – more than it spends on national defense or Medicare. Now those costs will grow even faster, putting them on track to rival Social Security as the single-largest line item in the federal budget within 20 years. Instead of being used to fund investments in America’s future, taxpayer dollars will be almost exclusively used to pay for previous obligations.
Perhaps what is most remarkable is that this massive assault on our country’s fiscal integrity was only made possible by the people pretending to be its loudest defenders. For years, self-identified “deficit hawks” in the House GOP conference repeatedly called the deficit an “existential threat.” And even though they relied on completely fake growth assumptions to argue that $2.5 trillion of tax cuts would pay for themselves, these representatives insisted they would not support legislation that included any additional tax cuts without offset. They went so far as to get a commitment from House Speaker Mike Johnson that he would step down if he passed a bill that crossed this red line. Yet when the Senate sent them a bill that blatantly violated their agreement, these “fiscal hawks” quickly folded under pressure and rubber-stamped it.
Compare that to what happened just four years ago under the Biden administration. President Biden’s full “Build Back Better” agenda, while no model of fiscal responsibility, would have added less than $3 trillion to budget deficits over the first 10 years if it had been permanently enacted. Even though they used budget gimmicks to do it, Democratic deficit hawks in the House ensured the reconciliation bill advancing this agenda was scored as roughly deficit-neutral under traditional accounting. And when Democratic deficit hawks in the Senate forced party leaders to strip out those gimmicks, the bill eventually became something that actually reduced deficits. While deficit hawks may be endangered within the Congressional Democratic Party, today it is clear they are functionally extinct on the Republican side.
As President Trump’s chaotic and destructive economic policies have shaken investor confidence in the first half of 2025, the U.S. dollar has lost over 10% of its value relative to foreign currencies — the worst such decline in more than 50 years. A weaker dollar results in more expensive imports, lower spending power when traveling internationally, and higher borrowing costs for both the American people and their government.
