WASHINGTON – According to a fresh analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Senate’s modifications to President Donald Trump’s extensive tax legislation would significantly inflate the national debt and sharply reduce health care coverage. This adds further complications for Republicans attempting to push the bill through.
The CBO projects that the Senate bill would increase the deficit by almost $3.3 trillion from 2025 to 2034, which is about $1 trillion more than the House version of the bill. The House bill is expected by the CBO to contribute $2.4 trillion to the debt over the next decade.
Additionally, the analysis indicates that if the bill becomes law, 11.8 million more Americans would go without insurance by 2034. This is an increase compared to the House bill’s estimation, which foresees 10.9 million additional people lacking health insurance.
The stark numbers are yet another obstacle for Republican leaders as they labor to pass Trump’s bill by his self-imposed July 4th deadline.
Even before the CBO’s estimate, Republicans were at odds over the contours of the legislation, with some resisting the cost-saving proposals to reduce spending on Medicaid and food aid programs even as other Republicans say those proposals don’t go far enough. Republicans are slashing the programs as a way to help cover the cost of extending some $3.8 trillion in Trump tax breaks put in place during his first term.
The push-pull was on vivid display Saturday night as a routine procedural vote to take up the legislation in the Senate was held open for hours as Vice President JD Vance and Republican leaders met with several holdouts. The bill ultimately advanced in a 51-49 vote, but the path ahead is fraught, with voting on amendments still to come.
Still, many Republicans are disputing the CBO estimates and the reliability of the office’s work. To hoist the bill to passage, they are using a different budget baseline that assumes the Trump tax cuts expiring in December have already been extended, essentially making them cost-free in the budget.
The CBO on Saturday released a separate analysis of the GOP’s preferred approach that found the Senate bill would reduce deficits by about $500 billion.
Democrats and economists decry the GOP’s approach as “magic math” that obscures the true costs of the GOP tax breaks.
In addition, Democrats note that under the traditional scoring system, the Republican bill bill would violate the Senate’s “Byrd Rule” that forbids the legislation from increasing deficits after 10 years.
In a Sunday letter to Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, CBO Director Phillip Swagel said the office estimates that the Finance Committee’s portion of the bill, also known as Title VII, “increases the deficits in years after 2034” under traditional scoring.
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