On July 18, The Signal published a letter written by Brian Richards in which he questioned the context of a claim made in a July 15 column by Jonathan Kraut that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would balloon the national debt. Clearly the national debt is already increasing at an unacceptable rate, but to contextualize the OBBBA’s impact on our national debt, one only has to look at the Congressional Budget Office Reports. On July 1, 2025, the CBO reported that, when compared with its January 2025 baseline budget projections, the bill increases deficits over the 2025-34 period by $3.4 trillion.
Deficit spending is historically debt financed and there is no apparent plan for an alternative means to fund OBBBA’s incremental deficit. Furthermore, the $3.4 trillion amount does not include interest costs that will be incurred to finance the incremental deficit. The Committee for a Responsible Budget, a nonpartisan think tank, estimates that the bill will add $4.1 trillion to the national debt by 2034. At some point the balloon is going to burst.
Jim de Bree
Valencia
