From our Budget Breakdown series highlighting problems in fiscal policy to inform the 2025 tax and budget debate.
Donald Trump was elected in 2024 on a promise to “End Inflation and Make America Affordable Again.” He criticized “Joe Biden’s reckless spending spree, which is more reckless than anybody’s ever done or had in the history of our country.” And he complained that the incumbent Democrat was guilty of “weak, ineffective, and virtually nonexistent leadership.” In survey after survey, voters made clear they largely agreed with Trump’s assessment.
Perhaps no episode of Biden’s presidency better displayed the traits that fueled these criticisms than his failed effort to pass a sprawling “Build Back Better” domestic spending bill through the filibuster-proof reconciliation process in 2021. But as Congressional Republicans begin crafting a “big beautiful bill” to enact the bulk of Trump’s economic agenda through that process, there are early signs that they’re making all the same mistakes — or perhaps even more.
Although very different in their origins and ideological goals, these two BBBs have far more in common than just their initials. Both Biden’s BBB and Trump’s BBB seem crafted more to fulfill a lengthy wishlist for the president’s ideological allies than address a pressing national need. Both parties struggled to find a way to pay for these wishlists in large part because of shortsighted tax pledges their presidential nominee made during the previous campaign. Rather than right-sizing their ambitions, Republicans today are seeking to ram through their BBB using legislative tactics eerily reminiscent of those that backfired on Democrats in 2021. And both parties pursued their BBB with a cavalier disregard for their contributions to inflation, provoking voters’ ire on their top economic concern.
But there are many ways in which the 2025 Republican BBB is likely to be even more damaging — both economically and politically — by piling on debt and exacerbating inflation at a time when the country can least afford it. If Republicans continue going down this path, they risk betraying their electoral mandate to cut the cost of living and giving Democrats a perfect opportunity to regain something that’s long eluded them: public confidence on handling the economy.
House Republicans have claimed that their proposed tax cuts “will generate $2.5 trillion in additional revenue through economic growth,” but several independent analyses have found that they would actually shrink the economy over the next decade.
