One Big, Predictable Mistake

At first glance, President Trump’s newly coined “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” reads like a populist fever dream: tax cuts for working families, boosted deductions for seniors, and a promise of economic revival. But as with all things that Trump promises, scratch beneath the surface, and you can see that it is a deficit-ballooning, inequality-widening, economically reckless piece of legislation with a hefty price tag that Americans will need to pay. 

Despite the bill’s rhetorical nods to working Americans, the numbers tell a different story. According to the Tax Foundation, households earning under $10,000 could lose an average of $2,700 a year in benefits thanks to deep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP, while households making over $200,000 might see windfalls of up to $13,200 annually in tax savings.

There is a tokenistic attempt to support the working class. The proposed tax relief for tip income and overtime pay may help some hourly workers in the short term, but it’s a plaster on a bullet wound. Stripping away essential healthcare and food assistance in exchange for temporary tax breaks is a cynical trade-off that leaves the most vulnerable Americans worse off. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found it would reduce income for the poorest 10% of households while boosting it for the top 10%.

Even Trump's superfan, Elon Musk, walked away from this mess, calling the bill out and expressing his disappointment “to see the massive spending bill, which increases the budget deficit … and undermines the work that the Doge team is doing.” And ballooning the budget deficit is just about the only thing this bill does well. The CBO projects the bill will add a jaw-dropping $3.8 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.

Republicans, once the self-styled party of fiscal responsibility, are now somehow content to let the nation’s debt-to-GDP ratio spiral to 129% by 2034. This cannot be overstated: $3.8 trillion is roughly 13.57% of the US GDP. That level of borrowing is on track to cripple the long term growth of the country as more money flows to debt repayments. Interest payments accounted for one out of eight dollars spent by the U.S. government last year and even without this bill it could rise to as high as one out of six thanks to an ageing population.

Investors are already nervous with 11-year bonds hovering around 5% meaning it is getting more expensive for the US government to borrow money. Moody's, the international credit rating agency, also agrees and downgraded the USA to Aa1 from Aaa, while its outlook was changed to stable from negative citing the rising debt levels in the US. 

To top it all off it’s fundamentally a bad deal. While it delivers a long-run GDP and GNP boost of 0.8% and creates nearly a million full-time equivalent jobs, these benefits come at a staggering cost with $1.7 trillion added to the deficit even after accounting for growth, and $3.2 trillion in lost revenue. That translates to roughly $1.73 million per job created and over $200 billion in deficit spending for every 0.1% of GDP growth. Worse still, pre-tax wages are predicted to rise by less than 0.05%, offering almost nothing for ordinary workers.

Trump’s self-styled “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” is anything but, and Democratic Representative Jim McGovern put it plainly “This bill is a scam.” The cost of which will be paid by working Americans for generations to come.