America's Talking - Budget Orgs Agree ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ Will Add Over $15T to National Debt

Episode Date: June 7, 2025

(The Center Square) – Despite the White House’s assertions that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will not add to the federal debt or deficit, four independent budget watchdogs agree that debt growth will accelerate and reach over $50 trillion by 2034, if the policy megabill becomes law. As emphasized Friday by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the Budget Lab at Yale predicts $52.3 trillion, the Congressional Budget Office predicts $52.4 trillion, the Tax Foundation predicts $52.8 trillion, and the Penn Wharton Budget Model predicts $56.3 trillion as the national debt number a decade from now.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_ed152061-1ef3-4f3c-906d-dca9690ee42c.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. The U.S. Senate is beginning debate on President Donald Trump's one big, beautiful budget bill, but the conversation devolved Thursday into a social media storm of fury between the president and his once-close ally, Elon Musk, who has criticized the package as government spending run amok. Trump didn't appreciate much.

Musk's criticism and the two went after each other on X, the social media site Musk owns, formerly known as Twitter. Joining me to discuss this is Therese Boudreau, congressional reporter for the Center Square. Teres, wow, that was quite the scene Thursday with the back and forth between the two. We are recording this Friday morning, so who knows what's going to happen today, but tell our listeners what happened yesterday. Hell, thanks for having me, Dan. So yesterday, Elon Musk, who has been relatively on the quieter side after taking a step back from Doge, tweeted that the one big, beautiful bill is an abomination. He said, I'm sorry, I can't just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous pork-filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those of you who vote for it. And so that was pretty out of the blue. Thomas Massey, who was a known fiscal watchdog, responded, he's very,

right. And so Trump did not take too kindly to that. And Trump tweeted out a response, essentially questioning why the federal government has so many contracts with Tesla and suggesting that maybe the federal government should end those contracts, which would help save money and would help in turn fund the one big, beautiful bill. And then they kind of just escalated from there. Musk retweeted a tweet calling for Trump's impeachment. And it's all just been a very, very dramatic. Yeah, very, very dramatic to say the least. Musk also made some sort of unsubstantiated claims that Trump is in the Jeffrey Epstein files.

Jeffrey Epstein was the man who was charged with sex trafficking, who authorities say committed suicide in prison in 2019, although there's all, kinds of conspiracy theories about that. So it got personal, really. And these are two men who, you know, just a week, a couple of weeks ago were best buds. And as we said, Trump, of course, supports the one big, beautiful bill, which he's trying to navigate through the Senate after it narrowly passed the House, the U.S. House, a couple of weeks ago. He gets defensive a lot of times from criticism doesn't take it kindly and must ex-tirate yesterday certainly didn't help matters. There is reports this morning that they are going to try and talk today. But, Terez, you've been covering the one big beautiful bill, the so-called one big beautiful bill in Congress as the House

had several hearings on it and ultimately passed it over to the Senate. How does this back and forth affect the bill? There are certainly some Republican U.S. Senate. senators who are skeptical of the bill as well, saying it spends too much money. What's next? Well, that's a difficult question asking what's next. But right now, it's in the Senate's ballpark. So the House, they, again, very narrowly passed by a margin of one vote. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, also it's also known as the budget reconciliation bill. And it does quite a lot of things. It's essentially a massive policy bill that codifies or, well, the House version extends for 10 years. The 2017 Trump tax cuts, it raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion as work requirements to Medicaid and SNAP. And it's extremely costly. It's in the multi-trillions, although budget organizations will debate whether different offsets. that lawmakers found in savings in the bill, how much those will take off the cost. House Speaker Mike Johnson, he made some very delicate deals in between, within different

factions of his own party. So there were some Republicans in the House who said they wouldn't vote for it unless the state and local tax deduction was raised or salt taxes. The deduction was raised. There were others who wanted more, the inflation reduction act was partially repealed, and so some wanted more of it repealed. So he had this very delicate balance where he fulfilled just enough of members' requirements to get it through the House. But now the Senate, they have their own wish list items. For one thing, none of the senators, none of the Republican senators, I should say, care about salt. And if they strip that from the package, that gives them more money to spend on other priorities, like permanently extending different business tax cuts.

One of the, also one of the major things in that bill is the use of baselines for basically the way that lawmakers score the cost of it. So the house operated under the traditional current law baseline, which basically just means they assume that extending the Trump tax cuts for the next 10 years is going to cost at least $4 trillion, because that's about $4 trillion in lost revenue. But the Senate, a lot of Republicans in the Senate, want to permanently extend the tax cuts. And this is where another huge debate has been going on. And there's actually been relative silence on Thune's part as they're going through other things. He said that he wants to use the current policy baseline, but that still hasn't been officially announced yet. Essentially, current policy baseline would be the seven,

saying, okay, these are, these tax cuts have been current policy since 2017. So extending them wouldn't add anything to the debt. It wouldn't cost anything. It'd just be a continuation of current policy. And if they do that, that theoretically subtracts trillions off the bill and makes it a lot more affordable looking. And then it also means, well, you can extend tax cuts forever if it has no fiscal impact. So a lot of budget organizations have been sounding me alarm on this. They say no, this is just a gimmick, congressional budget office, a committee for responsible, responsible federal budget. So CBO, they in particular, the White House has bashed them from the pulpit, so to speak. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said that the numbers from CBO were untrustworthy.

CBO was saying that even without any of the purported Senate changes, the current policy baseline, even if they didn't use current policy baseline, even if they just stuck with the House's version, and that's what got sent to President Trump's desk, that it would still add trillions to the federal debt and deficit. But Leavitt was saying that, you know, the CBO is staffed with a bunch of Democrats, and there they have this political bias. And then she also pointed to other times when CBO had incorrectly, very incorrectly guessed what the fiscal impacts of different, you know, bills would be like the CARES Act or the Inflation Reduction Act. So essentially casting doubt on CBO's projections. So it's really difficult to say what comes next, so to speak, except that, well, the Senate wants to get the bill.

well, the Senate wants to get the bill to the floor with all of their like different additions to it as soon as possible because Republican leader's deadline is to get the one big beautiful bill act to the president's desk by July 4th. It's kind of patriotic deadline. And because it raises the debt ceiling by $4 trillion, that would also be in time for them to address the ex-state that is when the government runs out of money, which is supposed to come. around July kind of in summertime. So Dune is going to have a hard time already because there are also hardliners in the Senate who do not want this much spending in the bill. And so they're looking for another $1.5 trillion in spending cuts. The House had already found $1.5 trillion in spending cuts. But that's going to be very difficult because there are also a lot of senators who do not want the renewable energy tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act to go away because their states have taken advantage of them, both red states and blue states. Even if Thune is able to get Oliver Helplicans on board, then whatever they send back to the House will also have to

be repassed by the House before it can go to President Trump's desk. And as I said, Johnson has already been walking this really delicate balance. He described to a friend apparently that felt like he was crossing the Grand Canyon over a piece of dental floss. And if you see what he's been doing and Medea, he's been trying to make it. Honestly, it's, it seems pretty accurate. So yeah, legislatively, what's next is that the Senate is going to come out with their additions to the one big beautiful bill, probably a lot of spending cuts, possibly some policy changes. They might get rid of a few things that the House added. But then after that, it's, it's kind of anyone's guess, whether they'll, they'll pass it. Obviously, Trump is exerting a lot of pressure on all

Republicans to do that. Because it's in the budget reconciliation process, it's filibuster proof. They don't need 60 votes to do it. They just need a majority. So, but again, even if it passes the Senate, even as soon as able to get everyone on board, it's still an open question then whether the House will approve whatever the Senate did. Well, there's obviously plenty of work left to do in the, in the U.S. Senate. um, Torres, who knows how this Trump, uh, Musk feud will distract from the work that needs to be done. But thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with all things, budget reconciliation and musk trumpfewed at the the center square.com.