The Senate has passed its version of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 reconciliation bill – the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the deficit impact , with interest, over the next 10 years will be $4.1 trillion. It would add $5.5 trillion to the nation’s debt if made permanent.

The Committee says the bill is littered with special interest giveaways and new tax and spending entitlements, relies on numerous budget gimmicks, makes the tax code more complicated and less fair and explodes interest costs to nearly $2 trillion per year – including by adding to the debt and pushing up interest rates throughout the economy.

“The Senate took a bill that already borrowed way too much, and took it from bad to worse,” the Committee said. “The Senate expanded the House’s tax breaks, watered down its offsets, introduced new special interest giveaways, and added another trillion dollars onto the price tag.”  

Donald Trump and the Republican Party say the Committee and the Democrats who agree with it are wrong. The White House says the measure will actually cut the deficit by $1.4 trillion. 

According to Factcheck.org, the Senate bill includes $4.5 trillion in tax cuts,  extending lower rates passed in 2017 and adding new tax cuts. But Senate Republicans have taken steps to remove consideration of the 2017 tax cuts in determining the bill’s impact on the deficit. Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty, who was presiding over the Senate in April, ruled that Sen. Lindsey Graham, the Senate Budget Committee chair, had the sole authority to decide whether extending the 2017 tax cuts officially adds to the deficit.

Graham and like-minded Senate Republicans have said that because the tax cuts have been in effect and are “current policy,” they are not new and do not add to future deficits.

The U.S. government announces its annual deficit and national debt each year, and often more frequently, such as monthly. The U.S. Treasury Department provides detailed information on the figures.

The national debt is the total amount of money the U.S. government owes from past and present borrowing, while the deficit is the difference between the government’s spending and revenue in a single year.

The TreasuryDirect website publishes data on the national debt, and the U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data website provides information on both the deficit and the debt. Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) releases monthly budget reviews that include the deficit or surplus for that month. 

My question – If the Republicans are right, how are they going to explain the increase in the deficit and national debt that likely will be announced down the road if The One Big Beautiful Bill Act eventually gets Trump’s signature? Hmmm. Tis a conundrum.

Maybe they will just mimic Gilda Radner’s character, Emily Litella, on Saturday Night Live.  When her misguided rants were challenged she just said, “Never mind”?