MAY 22, 2025
The House of Representatives passed its Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 budget reconciliation bill, which now moves to the Senate for its consideration. The bill would add roughly $3 trillion to the debt including interest over the next decade. The bill also includes several policy expirations to artificially lower the deficit impact of its tax cuts and spending increases; making those provisions permanent would lead the bill to adding roughly $5 trillion to the debt, including interest.
The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:
This plan is nothing short of a fiscal failure. It adds massively to the national debt, it relies on timing gimmicks and false claims about growth, it fails to make the structural spending reforms we desperately need, and it uses the important savings it does find to partially offset tax cuts rather than reduce the debt.
The fact that lawmakers passed this bill less than a week after America’s latest credit downgrade and yet another worrying Treasury auction is especially maddening. Will nothing wake our leaders up to the need to take our debt challenges seriously?
We embrace Treasury Secretary Bessent’s goal of bringing the deficit down to 3 percent of GDP, and yet this bill moves us in the wrong direction and would boost the deficit to around 7 percent of GDP, more than double the target.
And at a time when we need serious plans to reduce deficits and address rising government spending, this bill lowers projected spending by around 1 percent while increasing deficits by closer to 15 percent or more. While some are heralding this as a major success in controlling spending, spending would continue to grow rapidly after this bill – totaling about $85 trillion through 2034, compared to nearly $86 trillion under the current baseline.
With debt approaching record levels and interest costs surging, approving another $3 trillion of borrowing right now is nothing short of negligence.
When this bill makes its way to the Senate, it has a long road ahead of it in order to be considered responsible. We urge the Senate to work to craft a smart package that addresses these issues with the seriousness their colleagues on the other side of the Capitol were unable to muster.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
Yes, the hypocrisy is obvious as we know the deficit has now been discovered since January. DOGE was reviled as the process was just plain wrong say our friends on the left.
The problem remains though and it seems as if a crisis is the only tool left to jolt this country to do something before a financial Armageddon.
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The wording of their criticism is hard to follow. Saying the debt will grow by X amount including interest doesn’t make sense because interest is paid annually on the debt and not compounded. I don’t disagree that proposed spending is going on but this article on the spending left me more than confused in their explanation.
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How soon the CRFB forgets. It was only three or so years ago that they signed onto Biden Administration bills that significantly increased the federal deficit, and added to the national debt.
Where were they then, and why should we listen to them now?
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Good point, Jack. It seems like both sides of the aisle are committed to deficit spending but nobody wants to point out their guys as also guilty.
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When did they do that?
Here is what they said in June 2024
President Biden approved $5.7 trillion of gross ten-year primary spending increases, with the largest parts coming from the American Rescue Plan, the bipartisan infrastructure law, the Honoring Our PACT Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the omnibus appropriations bills for Fiscal Years (FY) 2022 and 2023. Without the American Rescue Plan, President Biden approved $3.9 trillion in gross primary spending increases. He also approved nearly $1.9 trillion in primary spending reductions, with the vast majority coming from the spending caps included in the Fiscal Responsibility Act as well as Medicare drug savings enacted under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
On the revenue side, Presidents Trump and Biden both approved tax cuts and revenue increases, with President Trump approving far more in tax cuts and President Biden approving somewhat more in tax increases.
President Trump approved nearly $2.9 trillion in tax cuts, with the majority coming from the TCJA. The rest came from repealing various Affordable Care Act taxes in the FY 2020 omnibus appropriations bill, tax breaks included in the CARES Act and other COVID relief bills, and various tax extenders packages. Not counting the tax cuts related to COVID relief, President Trump approved $2.4 trillion in tax cuts. He also approved about $400 billion of tax increases, which came overwhelmingly from tariffs on aluminum, steel, and other imports.
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Search my prior comments on your blog posts and you will find it.
Yes, Biden “reduced” spending by taking the Trump COVID infused spending rate and, after COVID peaked as an issue, we had the vaccines before Biden took office so all he had to do was roll them out, Biden pursued budgets with spending “reductions” even though the annual deficits averaged $1 trillion higher than pre-COVID.
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