Rash: The debt effect of the Big Beautiful Bill, by the numbers

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07/04/2025: President Donald Trump’s deadline for the Republican-controlled Congress to pass the massive tax-and-spend bill known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a date described as “arbitrary” in an analysis by the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute. “True independence,” the think tank continued, “means freeing future generations from the crushing weight of debt.”

$3.4 trillion: The Congressional Budget Office’s July 1 estimate of how much the bill would add to the debt over 10 years.

$4.1 trillion: The estimate from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

$6 trillion: Cato’s estimate of what could be the ultimate added cost.

“Under realistic assumptions about economic growth, congressional extensions of tax giveaways or delays to spending reform, and the fiscal impact of mass deportations, the bill’s cost could soar past $6 trillion,” Cato stated on July 2. “Put bluntly, the Senate’s megabill is a fiscal disaster. It violates the House’s fiscal framework and speeds the nation toward crisis.”

Other consistently conservative, fiscally focused organizations also put it bluntly when they analyzed the bill through think-tank green eyeshades instead of the administration’s rose-colored glasses.

“Rather than tax cuts providing some economic boost, economic models predict a negative overall economic impact as the bill drives up interest rates and adds to the long-term drag of debt on our economy,” said a July 3 statement from Concord Action, a self-described “grassroots movement of Americans who care deeply about our economy and fiscal outlook.”

Concord’s concern was amplified by its executive director, Carolyn Bordeaux, who said in a statement that “Congress has put our country’s economic well-being in great danger and raised the risk of a serious debt crisis. This vote was the culmination of months of dishonesty with the American people about the true costs and benefits of this legislation. In the process of passing this bill, Congress has broken the budget process and shattered vital, longstanding norms designed to ensure a sober, responsible approach to policymaking.”

Such a sober approach can take many forms, but there are some consistent principles. “Most of what the theories say, and I think these are good theories,” said Christopher Phelan, a University of Minnesota professor of economics, “is that you should basically pay off your debt in good times and borrow in bad times and keep your taxes relatively smooth, because in good times tax revenue booms and in bad times they plummet.”

Overall, “we’re kind of in good times now,” continued Phelan. “So it’s not clear we want to run these big deficits, and we’ve been running big deficits in good and bad times the last 20 years or so.”

That span included years of Democratic congressional and presidential profligacy; the party’s lawmakers are equally complicit in the already unsustainable debt. But regarding America’s fiscal future, longstanding deficit hawks who had an eagle eye over the process and product signed into law on July 4th have not minced words.

This group includes Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, who said in a searing statement that “In a massive fiscal capitulation, Congress has passed the single most expensive, dishonest, and reckless budget reconciliation bill ever — and, it comes amidst an already alarming fiscal situation. Never before has a piece of legislation been jammed through with such disregard for our fiscal outlook, the budget process, and the impact it will have on the well-being of the country and future generations.

“Our fiscal condition is currently precarious, with debt-to-GDP soaring towards an all-time record, interest costs surging past nearly all other parts of the budget, and the Social Security and Medicare trust funds heading towards insolvency. This bill, which has been described by champions as ‘a start’ toward fiscal sustainability, would in fact make every single one of these problems worse — in some cases, dramatically worse.”

Throughout the legislative process, MacGuineas said, “we have eroded the fragile norms that stop politicians from adding unlimited amounts to the national debt. Congress didn’t just increase the debt by $4 trillion — they engaged in a massive cover-up about it, and they forced the scorekeeper to do the same. What’s the point of budgeting at all, if you can just make up whatever numbers you want?”

Michael A. Peterson, president and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, whose self-described mission is “to increase public awareness of the nature and urgency of the key fiscal challenges threatening America’s future and to accelerate action on them,” was similarly unflinching.

“Today, our national debt stands at $36 trillion and we were on pace to add $22 trillion more over the next decade,” Peterson said in a July 3 statement. “This legislation will add more than $4 trillion to our debt trajectory, even though budget reconciliation is a tool intended to improve our fiscal health. The true fiscal damage of the bill may be much greater, if the temporary tax cuts are extended and the delayed spending cuts fail to materialize.

“If America is going to find its way back to its principle of leaving the next generation better off, our elected leaders must acknowledge that growing the national debt is burdening our own kids and grandkids, and weakening the very independence that we are celebrating this [July 4] weekend.”

One: The adjective added to the omnibus bill by the president, whose command of his caucus and the country’s government is similarly singular, all of which led to the legislative result.

11/03/2026: The midterm election.