Blowing Up the Federal Debt
Sahil Kapur at NBC: President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which he signed into law this month, will add $3.4 trillion to the U.S. national debt over the next decade, according to a report the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office published Monday.
The report found that the law, which Republicans passed along party lines, will also “increase by 10 million the number of people without health insurance” by 2034.
The budget office scrutinized the final version of the bill after Republicans made a series of last-minute changes to cobble together the votes needed in the Senate; it passed 51-50. That revised version subsequently passed the House on a vote of 218-214. Trump enacted it on July 4.
The package extends Trump’s 2017 tax cuts while providing tax deductions for tips and overtime pay for the next four years. It includes hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending for the military and to carry out Trump’s mass deportation agenda. And it pays for some of that with cuts to Medicaid, SNAP benefits (which help low-income families purchase groceries) and clean energy funding.
The analysis found that the law’s net spending cuts of $1.1 trillion are outstripped by the $4.5 trillion in decreased revenue, compared with if the measure had not passed.
