So the Republicans voted for a budget. Bully for them. Congratulations are in order if you're a politician looking to spend far beyond our means with no hope of addressing the $36 trillion national debt.
If you were hoping for a smidgin of hope that Congress would get its act together and start addressing the catastrophic problems with entitlements, you're a "Sailor Out of Luck (SOL)" or something like that.
The Republicans just passed a federal budget that promises $2 trillion deficits as far out as the eye can see. The idea that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) can help address that problem is fanciful nonsense. DOGE has promised to cut $500 billion from our budget deficit. That's about 26% of the total. It's a healthy start but no more.
Those cuts come from discretionary spending, which is about 16% of the $7 trillion budget. If we're ever going to make a dent in our $36 trillion debt and get close to balancing the budget, we will have to address the problem of entitlement spending before anything concrete can be done.
Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, one of the few true "budget hawks" left in the House, put it succinctly on X.
If the Republican budget passes, the deficit gets worse, not better.
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) February 24, 2025
The budget resolution the House passed on Tuesday is asking Republican committee chairs to find $2 trillion in budget cuts over 10 years. But those cuts would be offset by $4.5 trillion in new deficits that will come as a result of renewing the 2017 tax cuts.
Reason's Eric Boehm shows the illusory nature of the GOP budget.
This bill is just a blueprint, which means any specific spending cuts and the details of the extended tax cuts—including vital things like future rates and whether the extension is permanent or temporary—will be determined later, and the specific spending and tax cut figures will likely change as those specifics are nailed down. Still, the tradeoff that this bill would establish is not an encouraging sign.
Of course, allowing Americans to keep more of their hard-earned income by extending the 2017 tax cuts is a good idea. If those tax cuts expire, nearly everyone will owe the government a bigger cut (as I explained in greater detail in the January 2025 issue of Reason).
Even so, prudent budgeting requires that tax cuts be offset with equal (or greater) reductions in spending. Doing otherwise is a promise to borrow funds to fill the inevitable gap in the budget—which means the tax cuts are an illusion, since that borrowing will have to be paid back, plus interest, with future taxes.
Some delusional Republicans are arguing that we can grow our way out of these deficits. Their fantastical growth projections to justify the spending would make a good fairy tale, although I wouldn't recommend reading it to your kids.
Republicans are saying that the economy will grow more than 40% faster each year over the coming decade than the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects. This will yield a ten-year “economic bonus” that would reduce the projected deficit by $2.6 trillion.
Growth that's 40% faster every year? Pass me whatever they're smoking.
If Congress passes this budget blueprint and follows through with it when passing new spending and tax cuts, it would add $3.4 trillion to the debt over the next 10 years, according to an estimate by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. That means the federal government would be accumulating debt at an even faster rate than it already is, and the debt held by the public would hit 125 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by the end of the decade, rather than the current pace of 117 percent of GDP.
The lies are necessary because Congress doesn't want to face the truth. And since the American people don't care very much one way or the other (they keep returning these people to office every two years), there's not much to be done except hope that when everything collapses, you're somewhere else.
