Trumps big beautiful bill adds $2.4T to deficit, CBO concludes

President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act will increase the federal deficit by about $2.4 trillion over a 10-year period in its current form, according to a comprehensive analysis released Wednesday by the Congressional Budget Office.The bulk of that deficit increase comes from the megabill’s sweeping tax cuts, which would lead to DC taking in roughly $3.7 trillion fewer between 2025 and 2034.Republicans attempted to mitigate the deficit impact by tacking on more than $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over a decade, but also increased defense and border spending by almost $300 billion.The deficit refers to the gap between federal revenue and spending, essentially the amount of money being added to the national debt, which stands at almost $37 trillion.Last month, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an outside nonprofit group, analyzed that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would add $2.5 trillion to the deficit over a 10-year period, but that impact would jump to $3.1 trillion when factoring in the impact on interest on the debt.The CBO is expected to release its findings on the megabill’s debt service effects within the coming days.The congressional scorekeeper had previously released rough estimates for key components of the mammoth bill.Prior to the bill’s May 22 passage by the House, the CBO released a preliminary assessment relying on data from the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), concluding that the measure would reduce revenue by about $3.8 trillion over a 10-year period.Republican leadership and the White House have argued that extending provisions in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act shouldn’t count as an increase to the deficit because those provisions were always meant to be permanent — despite those measures being set to expire at the end of this year.“The lefty CBO says extending the 2017 tax cuts (preventing their expiration) increases the deficit,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller argued on X.

“Honestly acco...