CBO Tells Merkley: When Including Interest and Assuming Temporary Tax Provisions Are Made Permanent, “One Big, Beautiful Bill” Adds $5 Trillion to Debt

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) told U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, that when accounting for interest costs and assuming the temporary tax provisions of the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” are instead made permanent, the debt will increase by $5 trillion over the next 10 years. Recently, CBO released analysis showing that the bill will add $3.4 trillion to the debt excluding the increased interest on the national debt caused by the provisions in the bill that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans.

“Each and every analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office continues to show the same result regardless of how you look at it: this bill explodes the debt by trillions of dollars to fund tax breaks for billionaires,” said Ranking Member Jeff Merkley. “Republicans can’t spin the fact that this bill is bad policy that kicks more than 15 million people off of their health insurance, will force millions of kids to go hungry, and explodes the national debt by $5 trillion over the next 10 years – pushing the cost of this bill onto future generations to ensure billionaires can pay less in taxes. It is the height of hypocrisy coming from the party that claims to be fiscally responsible.”

Even as their party pretends that it is free to enact extensions of expiring tax giveaways, the Republican “One Big, Beautiful Bill” cynically – and contradictorily – ends several new tax breaks after four or five years, both so Republicans can campaign on these provisions again when it comes time to extend them, and so they can artificially hold down the cost of their bill. Although Republicans are clear that they intend to make all their tax giveaways permanent, they engineered a lower cost estimate by pretending the new tax breaks will end. Sen. Merkley requested this new analysis to more accurately show the Republicans’ true intentions.

To read the full report, click HERE.

###