Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” would increase the total U.S. deficit by nearly $2.8 trillion over the next decade, according to a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office.
Previous estimates suggested that the massive spending bill would add $2.4 trillion to the national deficit over the next 10 years, but a “dynamic” estimate published Tuesday takes into account how the legislation would affect the U.S. economy—and things got even more dire.
The CBO projected that an increase in economic output would decrease the primary deficit by $85 billion over the 2025–2034 period, while also significantly boosting interest rates, which would push the federal debt to a whopping $441 billion.
“Incredible—CBO says the House-passed GOP bill pays for only 3.5% of itself,” Bobby Kogan, the senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, wrote on X Tuesday.
Despite previous damning reports, MAGA Republicans backing the bill have continued to claim that the CBO is biased, rather than make any concessions, and have claimed that the CBO’s evaluations of the legislation’s cost don’t take the revenue from Trump’s sweeping global tariffs into effect.
In a letter to Democratic lawmakers earlier this month, the CBO projected that Trump’s tariffs, as they were in mid-May, could decrease the deficit by $2.8 trillion—but said any projection came with some uncertainty, as Trump’s tariffs are ever-vacillating.
The newest analysis suggests that the costs will only go up after taking the economy into account. The CBO estimated that over the next decade, the legislation would affect the economy by increasing gross domestic product by an average of 0.5 percent, increasing the interest rates on 10-year Treasury notes by 14 basis points, and increasing inflation “by a small amount” through 2030, but not afterward.
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