The party of deficit-busting is about to blow a multi-trillion dollar hole in federal revenues—and paper it over with a budgetary gimmick.
As they stumble toward a budget bill, GOP lawmakers are also working to renew the tax cuts package from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. As originally passed, those cuts were temporary—a necessity to make the budgetary math add up at the time. But because current law plans for them to expire, renewing them would (per traditional accounting rules) blow a brand new hole in the federal budget, spiking deficits by hundreds of billions of dollars a year. This will all come at a time when Republicans are trying to posture as though they’re finally ready to get serious—no fooling this time—about the debt.
So how do Republicans hope to surmount this messaging hurdle? By lying, mostly.
The current budget framework, approved by the Senate last week and by the House on Wednesday, takes an approach to assessing its impact on the deficit you might charitably call novel. Rather than scoring the framework on a “current law” baseline—as in, recognizing that the tax cuts are legally set to expire and being honest about the cost of renewing them in the budget framework—Republicans are using a “current policy” baseline: assessing the budget framework in contrast with tax levels as they stand today.
Why make this change? Because it gives them permission to pretend that permanently renewing temporary tax cuts—which, again, had to be temporary to make the math work when they were originally passed—comes with a price tag of zero. It’s free real estate.
It’s hard to find an appropriate metaphor for how ridiculous this is, but Manhattan Institute economist Jessica Riedl took an admirable stab in the New York Times back in March. “Last year, despite being deeply in debt, I bought a $100,000 sports car. So next year, buying another $100,000 sports car is not irresponsible because I am merely spending the same amount of money as the year before,” she wrote. “And if I purchase ‘only’ a $70,000 car, then I should be congratulated for reducing my annual spending by $30,000.”
This is too much for even some Republicans to bear, thus House Speaker Mike Johnson had to cave and not allow the budget to come to a vote.
World Record Spender Donald Trump ordered the House to "close your eyes and get there."
Close your eyes and get there.
Who gives a damn if Trump is driving the country off the cliff in every way possible, amiright?
Remember DOGE was going to save us all taxpayer money? BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! Priceless.
"The largest deficit increase in history".
If you were trying to hasten financial collapse of our country and bribe voters to go along with it, the strategy wouldn’t look much different than what Congress is doing today.
The big beautiful bill cuts taxes while keeping spending on an increasingly unsustainable trajectory.
BOOM.
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