The Congressional Budget Office estimates the tax bill will increase deficits by $2.4 trillion. Is that right, or do you think deficits will come in higher or lower?
The CBO estimates that the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA) will increase the federal deficit by $2.4 trillion over 10 years, though actual impacts could be far worse. Key spending cuts are delayed until after 2030, making them uncertain. The estimate excludes $551 billion in interest costs and doesn’t assume tax cut extensions—if those are included, the deficit increase could reach at least $4.4 trillion. Additional interest costs and persistent spending hikes, especially for defense, mean the true impact may be much higher. Overall, OBBBA is likely to significantly worsen the fiscal outlook.
Yes, the CBO released its estimate of the so-called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (OBBBA), H.R. 1, at the end of May. That estimate shows OBBBA will increase budget deficits by $2.4 trillion over ten years (FY 2025 through FY 2034). CBO scores legislation based on what the actual text says and doesn’t take congressional behavior into account. In other words, Congress has a nasty habit of extending tax cuts and spending.
In this case, the spending cuts in OBBBA are backloaded. Roughly 70% of the deficit reduction in the bill comes after FY 2030. It’s an open question whether those cuts–or how much of them–will come to fruition.
CBO also didn’t include the $551 billion of increased interest costs caused by OBBBA in its estimate. However, the agency did reveal those costs separately. If the temporary tax cuts in OBBBA are extended through FY 2034, that’ll add another $1.427 trillion. This brings the increase in the deficit through FY 2034 to $4.4 trillion. Although that math includes interest costs for OBBBA, it doesn’t include interest costs for the extension of the temporary tax cuts. (Just a note. I used CBO’s worksheet to estimate interest costs and got $667 billion. That’s likely a low estimate for multiple reasons, but it’s low primarily because interest rates on treasuries are higher than the CBO projected.) Additionally, the increased spending in OBBBA, particularly for defense and homeland security, is likely to stick around.
To bring it back home, OBBBA is likely to significantly increase the deficit and debt over the next ten years, perhaps twice as much as the CBO projected or more. OBBBA takes an already bad situation and makes it significantly worse.
After becoming the face of the opposition to Trump’s deportations, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is now accused of human trafficking. Do the opponents of the deportations now have egg on their faces?
The real issue in Abrego Garcia’s deportation was the denial of due process, not the charges against him. The Trump administration failed to follow court orders to bring him back after a federal and a Supreme Court ruling. Although he faces conspiracy and unlawful transport charges, labeling the case as “human trafficking” is misleading, as he wasn’t charged under those statutes. The timing of the charges is questionable, and a senior prosecutor even resigned in protest. Now that Garcia is back, he’ll face trial with the due process guaranteed to all persons under the Constitution.
No, I don’t think so. I know this is the narrative from the Trump administration and the far-right, but the issue with Abrego Garcia’s deportation was the lack of due process given to him. Which is to say, there was no due process afforded to him. Add to the situation that the administration insisted that it couldn’t bring Abrego Garcia back to the United States and dragged its feet when ordered to do so by a federal court backed by a ruling from the Supreme Court. Abrego Garcia isn’t alone when it comes to the lack of due process in these deportation cases.
We have to remember that the charges are a conspiracy to transport aliens and the unlawful transport of undocumented aliens. (The use of the phrase “human trafficking” is being used to stoke emotion. Human trafficking statutes are in a different chapter of U.S. Code, and Abrego Garcia wasn’t charged under those statutes.) Abrego Garcia is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. You also have to wonder why this accusation wasn’t revealed until just recently, in early June, when he was deported in mid-March. Bringing the charges against Abrego Garcia was apparently controversial, as one of the senior prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville, where the charges were filed, resigned over the decision.
Now that Abrego Garcia is back in the United States, he’ll face the charges against him. That’s due process. Whether he’s being unfairly targeted for prosecution will come out during the case. Due process is a foundational right, codified in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. As the Supreme Court has held and repeatedly upheld, the right to due process applies to all persons in the United States, whether they are citizens, legal immigrants, or undocumented migrants.
I’m all for cutting government waste, but what DOGE did and the way they went about it was an actual distraction from what is really driving our debt and deficits…Social Security, Medicare, and the interest on the debt. Why don’t more people know about that?
While DOGE began as a promising effort to address government waste, it became ineffective and partisan under Elon Musk’s leadership. Musk failed to meet spending cut targets, made inaccurate claims about Social Security and Medicare, and alienated voters. The initiative lacked bipartisan support and focused on less significant parts of the budget. Meanwhile, major drivers of the deficit—Social Security, Medicare, interest, defense, and Medicaid—make up the vast majority of federal spending. Without addressing these, the U.S. faces a mounting fiscal crisis likened to an “insurance company with a nuclear arsenal and a credit card problem.”
DOGE initially started as a good idea that focused on government waste. By the time Elon Musk left the administration, DOGE had turned into a significant distraction. Polls indicate that voters generally supported the concept of DOGE, but not necessarily its implementation. He failed to achieve his target for spending cuts, and it’s unclear whether the savings DOGE claims are actually real.
Musk did, though, talk about Social Security and Medicare. Unfortunately, he made some claims about the programs that were wildly inaccurate. By that point, DOGE was a highly partisan issue, and Musk was viewed unfavorably by voters. Modernizing Social Security and Medicare–which addresses net interest, at least to some extent–takes input and cooperation from both parties. It’s not something that can be done on a partisan basis. There has to be buy-in from both parties to reduce the toxicity of addressing these issues.
Getting to the actual question. Unfortunately, DOGE didn’t get much buy-in from anyone but conservatives in Congress, and its focus was almost exclusively on the spending that isn’t driving deficits and debt. Social Security, interest on the share of the debt held by the public, and Medicare were 48% of all federal spending in FY 2024. Add in defense and Medicaid, and it’s 70%. These five programs/categories of federal spending will reach 78% of federal spending in FY 2035. I don’t know how else to say this, but the United States is an insurance company with a nuclear arsenal and a severe credit card debt problem that’s driving it to bankruptcy.
As an independent voter, I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone in the current administration thought that sending out ICE agents into cities was in any way a good idea. What would be the best way to go about legal immigration policy?
Both parties avoid fixing immigration laws because it's a politically divisive issue. While migration surged during the Biden administration, similar patterns have occurred in past decades. Changes in border encounters often reflect broader economic and policy shifts, like the Great Recession or COVID-era Title 42. The real urgency lies in the U.S.’s demographic decline—birth rates have fallen below replacement level, and deaths will outpace births among native-born Americans by 2033. Future population growth will depend on immigration, which is vital for sustaining economic growth through workforce participation and consumer demand.
We need to be honest that few Democrats and Republicans actually want to address the root issue with immigration, which is our broken immigration laws and persistent economic issues, corruption, crime, and other problems in the countries from which people migrate. Neither party wants to address immigration laws because it’s a wedge issue that drives the bases of their parties.
Although there was indeed a record surge of migration at the Southern border during the Biden administration, we’ve seen similar surges in the past. Look back at the 1980s through the 2000s, and you’ll see a high rate of migration at the Southern border. There was a period of decline that corresponded with the Great Recession and the slow economic recovery that followed, before encounters at the border surged in 2019, a time when the United States was experiencing a robust economy. Encounters fell again in 2020, coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic and Title 42, a pandemic-era policy implemented in March 2020 and remaining in effect until it was terminated in May 2023.
The immigration issue does need to be addressed, though, because of what’s happening to the native-born population in the United States. Earlier this year, CBO released its long-term demographic projections. Because the birth rate in the United States has fallen to 1.6 births per woman. We need 2.1 births per woman just to sustain the population. This is a common problem among developed economies. In the United States, though, we’ll see more deaths than births among the native-born population beginning in 2033. What population growth America does see will come from net immigration.
Of course, the projections for net immigration were made before the deportations carried out by the Trump administration. It remains to be seen whether that will impact projections going forward. In other words, we could begin to see a downward trend in the United States population in just eight years. That’s a problem for the broader economy because productivity and consumption are what drive economic growth. If we don’t have enough workers to fill job openings and people to purchase goods and services, that could lead to economic stagnation.
What’s this power plant rule everyone is talking about?
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the repeal of two Biden-era emissions rules for power plants, aiming to support the coal industry. However, the market has already shifted towards cleaner and cheaper natural gas, while renewables produce more power than coal, making this move a symbolic gesture towards a declining industry.
On Wednesday, Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, announced plans to repeal two Biden-era emissions rules. The first is the Greenhouse Gas Standards and Guidelines for Fossil Fuel-Fired Power Plants, and the second is the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. The gist is that these two rules reduce the amount of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and mercury emitted into the air by power plants.
Why does this matter? We’ve been using coal as an energy source for electricity since the late 1800s and as a source of heat for millennia prior to that. Nevertheless, coal use has been declining since its peak during the second term of George W. Bush's administration. It has largely been replaced by natural gas, mainly due to what is known as the Shale Revolution. In short, we improved our ability to access harder-to-reach hydrocarbons, making natural gas and oil significantly cheaper to produce. This also transformed the US into a net exporter of natural gas and oil.
The market has already pushed to reduce the American reliance on coal. Natural gas is cleaner and cheaper than coal, so more base-load energy is being generated from natural gas. Natural gas also has the added advantage of being easier to increase power generation for peak load. Don’t believe me? The GAO notes that nearly 70% of peak production power plants are fueled by natural gas. Coal makes up 3.3%.
Why is this happening? During the campaign (2016, 2020, and 2024), President Trump regularly talked about how great “clean” coal is for American power generation. In April, his executive order highlighted the importance of coal for American national and economic security. This doesn’t really pass the smell test, as coal has steadily declined under Obama, Trump, Biden, and again Trump. There was actually more coal capacity retired during Trump’s first administration than in Biden’s administration.
What this move really represents is an effort to support a dying industry that the current market is leaving behind—a bone thrown to the buggywhip manufacturers at the beginning of the automobile era. Natural gas is king, nuclear is about to boom as the data center and AI surge continue, and renewables are already producing more utility-scale electricity than coal. Sure, Administrator Zeldin can say that this is about protecting American jobs (coal jobs declined 7.5% under Trump’s first administration), pushing back against climate change policy, or unleashing American energy. However, this is merely another activist attempt to pick a winner from a clear loser.
