Romina Boccia
Romina Boccia and Dominik Lett
On April 2, the Senate unveiled a new budget blueprint, a crucial step in using reconciliation to enact President Donald Trump’s agenda. This budget isn’t just a missed opportunity; it actively worsens our nation’s debt trajectory. The resolution abandons the House’s concrete spending reductions desperately needed in today’s high-debt environment, sets a dangerous precedent by adopting a so-called current policy baseline that hides the very real deficit impact of extending tax cuts, and adds hundreds of billions in new deficit spending. The Senate should go back to the drawing board.
Under the amended budget framework, the Senate allows for $1.5 trillion in new tax cuts plus $500 billion in new spending, primarily for immigration and defense. That’s on top of the $3.8 trillion in tax cuts that will be magically waived away by using a current policy baseline—roughly the equivalent of pretending it doesn’t cost anything to extend a streaming subscription because you’ve been paying for it for a few months already. The graph below shows the change to the deficit over ten years under the amended resolution.
Together, the Senate’s amended resolution would add $5.8 trillion in new deficits over ten years. Per the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, that would double the growth of the debt-to-GDP ratio, with public debt reaching an astonishing 211 percent of GDP by 2055. To offset new tax cuts and spending, the Senate proposes a paltry $4 billion in spending cuts. Shameful.
For comparison, the current House budget resolution, while allowing $2.8 trillion in new borrowing, provides concrete instructions for $1.5 trillion in spending reductions and contains a binding measure to encourage $2 trillion in savings. That’s hardly a full offset tax package, but at least the House attempts to bend the arc on rampant federal spending. The Senate doesn’t even try. » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/senates-latest-budget-resolution-fiscal-train-wreck