Statement from Steve Ellis, President, Taxpayers for Common Sense, on the Senate passage of the FY2025 budget reconciliation, One Big Beautiful Bill Act

Congress has officially lost its mind when it comes to fiscal responsibility. The Senate’s reconciliation bill is a textbook example of how to undermine America’s economic and fiscal stability while pretending to help taxpayers. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is a really ugly, scary, ticking debt bomb.

The Senate wants to lock in nearly $4.5 trillion in tax cuts while reducing net spending by less than $1.3 trillion, adding $3.24 trillion to our nation’s already unsustainable debt. And that’s before the Congressional Budget Office calculates macroeconomic effects and future interest payments, which drove up the House bill’s score. We could be looking at $4 trillion in additional deficits before we are through.

The Senate couldn’t be bothered to wait for a final CBO score—they passed a multi-trillion-dollar bill without knowing the price tag.

Reconciliation was supposed to be Congress’s tool for fiscal discipline. Instead, senators are using “current policy” scoring—a fancy term for pretending that temporary tax cuts are permanent fixtures—to hide trillions in costs from the American people. It’s the legislative equivalent of cooking the books.

The American people aren’t fooled by Washington’s shell games. They know that when Congress refuses to pay for tax cuts today, those costs don’t disappear – they compound with interest and land squarely on the backs of taxpayers tomorrow. This reconciliation bill represents the worst kind of fiscal malpractice: borrowing trillions to pay for massive tax cuts and pretending the bill will never come due. This is why our debt now exceeds the size of the economy—and annual interest payments surpass what we spend on defense.

In 2000, the national debt was under $6 trillion. Today, it’s over $36 trillion.

Congress needs to stop treating taxpayer dollars like it’s funny-money and start governing like the fiscal future of our nation actually matters. The American people deserve leaders who will level with them about costs, not magicians who make trillions in new deficits disappear through accounting tricks.

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Taxpayers for Common Sense is a nonpartisan budget watchdog calling out wasteful spending and advocating for transparency.