The Congressional Budget Office projects that President Trump’s “One Big beautiful Bill” will increase federal deficits by about $2.4 trillion over the next ten years.
The Trump administration says the bill reduces deficits by $1.4 trillion over 10 years when adjusted for the economic growth that it maintains will occur as a result of extending 2017 tax cuts.
Senator Shelley Moore Capito says she agrees with Trump.
“So I’m with the president on this one,” Capito said in response to a MetroNews question during a briefing with West Virginia reporters.
Capito, like representatives of the administration, cited the experience of “tremendous growth” from the tax bill originally passed in 2017.
“If we can go back and look at that, and look at what the Congressional Budget Office was predicting then and what actually happened, they didn’t predict correctly the growth in the economy, which was really on a huge upswing in 2018, 2019, before we got to covid,” she said, referring to the pandemic.
“And that was as a result of, mainly, a lot of the small business tax credits that are in in the bill with accelerated depreciation, accelerated expense deductions and all those kinds of things. And so we’re going to make sure that those are part of this bill, which will increase the growth much like it did almost 10 years ago.”
The senator predicted that “we’re going to see tremendous growth to cover whatever this bill could cost.”
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has concluded that the earlier round of tax cuts significantly increased the national debt from 2018 to the present by somewhere between $1 trillion and $2 trillion.
The U.S. Senate majority is aiming to pass the big reconciliation bill by July 4.
The tax cut extension in the reconciliation bill is estimated to cost $3.8 trillion over 10 years.
“Quite frankly, I’m not going to vote for something that raises everybody’s taxes,” Capito said. “And if this bill doesn’t go through, that’s exactly what will happen.”
The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget recommends that to avoid the negative economic and fiscal impact of the tax cut extensions, lawmakers should limit extensions to the most important and pro-growth elements.
The organization also advises making thoughtful and fiscally responsible adjustments to the tax cuts while coupling any net tax cuts with enough offsets to pay for the costs and lower debt.
Analysts say the deficit in the One Big Beautiful Bill” would be driven by a combination of increased spending and reduced tax revenue.
The reconciliation bill includes some spending cuts, particularly in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Medicaid, but those are partially offset by other spending increases and tax cuts.
For example, the bill includes increased spending on border security, as well as an elimination of taxes on tips and overtime.
The United States government already has about $29 trillion in public debt.
Some of Senator Capito’s colleagues, like Republicans Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, have been deeply critical of the bill’s potential effects on the debt.
Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate.
Senator Johnson said the bill will not pass the Senate in its current form because it will “skyrocket” the deficit.
“The trajectory of deficits is up, and no matter what the big, beautiful bill does, it does not address that long-term prospect. It does not bend the deficit curve down,” Johnson said on NewsNation. “It supports it going up.”