“This bill, as it’s currently structured, would blow up the national debt,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget this week in an interview with Audacy.
She was referring to the “Big Beautiful Bill” championed by President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress. So far, the bill has passed the House of Representatives and the White House has hailed it as a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to cement an America First agenda of prosperity, opportunity, and security into law.”
However, critics – including the non-partisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget – are worried about how the bill would add to the nation’s deficit if passed.
“This is a bill that would add about $3 trillion… to the national debt at a time where we should only be passing legislation that would reduce the debt,” MacGuineas told WWL’s Tommy Tucker.
One of the reasons why MacGuineas and other experts are so concerned about the debt is interest rates. While interest rates have been low due to U.S. currency being seen as the global reserve currency, she noted that interest rates are in fact going up, which can increase the federal debt.
“We are now in a situation where interest payments on the national debt for the federal government are the second largest item in the budget,” MacGuineas explained. “They are now larger than national defense, which is one of those warning signs… you just don’t want to cross that line.
And in fact, they are the single fastest growing part of our federal budget,” and they eat away at government programs.
As interest rates increase costs, MacGuineas also said that the political climate in the U.S. has stymied progress on actually getting anything done to deal with the deficit. Already, the U.S. is expected to borrow $22 trillion over the next decade even if we do nothing.
“People tend to use their party as the signal of what they should believe… but a lot of times the parties are so busy fighting against each other as we get more polarized instead of trying to do what’s best for the country, it divides us even further,” she said.
For example, the Big Beautiful Bill. MacGuineas mentioned that one of the aims of the package is to extend tax cuts first implemented by Trump back in 2017, during his first term in office. However, it also adds new tax cuts into the mix, further heightening her concerns.
“There is a real debate within Congress to what extent to offset the costs of this bill,” she said. Furthermore, MacGuineas told Tucker that the legislation has a “lot of gimmicks in it,” that essentially just push costs down the road.
While many Americans might discount the impact of the nation’s debt on their lives and prefer tax cuts to complicated discussions about the country’s budget MacGuineas said the debt does have tangible, important impacts.
“It’s important that people understand that this huge debt undermines our economy, undermines our ability to grow our standard of living, our wages, our jobs,” she explained. “It has profound effects because it pushes out all the private sector investment, but it also means that those interest payments push out the federal government’s ability to do things.”
MacGuineas noted that the debt can contribute to the U.S. being less prepared to handle emergencies and it puts us at risk for thigs such as inflation or a recession. Another concern lies with who owns the debt.
“It’s a national security threat,” she said. “If we have to borrow from countries abroad, including China, countries with whom we are not aligned with, we are dependent on them.”
Finally, MacGuineas also addressed a glaring issue standing out in the nation’s budget”: the impending insolvency of Social Security.
“Our number one government program, Social Security, which so many people depend on for their benefits – it is going to be insolvent in eight years, which means those benefits will not be able to be paid. And instead of having a political class that is warning that and saying, ‘Okay, let’s figure out the solutions. Here’s the possible thing. Let’s figure it out.’ They are in absolute denial,” she said. “We had two candidates run for president talking about not fixing the system. And if we don't make changes to Social Security in eight short years... there will be across the board benefit cuts for every single recipient of about 23% and it's unconscionable.”
Still, there are things our elected officials can do to increase the health of our nation’s finances. Listen here to learn more.