Welcome, everyone. I am Adam Michelle, Director of Tax Policy Studies here at the Cato Institute. I'm here with two of my colleagues to discuss the One Big Beautiful Bill. I'm here with Michael Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies at Cato.

And Dominic Litt, budget policy analyst.

Excellent. So the one big, beautiful bill passed through Congress. President Trump signed it on July 4th. A big ceremony. The bill touches just about every facet of the federal budget, tax policy, the broader economy. It's hard to

put into a 30-minute podcast what it all covers. But I'm hoping to start with you, Dom, try to give us

a flavor of what this thing does, sort of the low lights, highlights on the expenditure side. How does it

impact the deficit? Where are we high level with this bill? So most of the deficit cost of the

bill comes from the extension of tax cuts from Trump's first administration. Those are partially

offset by spending reductions

across a bunch of different programs, primarily spending reductions for health care. But

broad thesis level, the bill could add about $6 trillion to the debt over 10 years. As written,

the bill adds $3.4 trillion to the deficit compared to current law. But that cost

rises if you consider things like interest costs, politicians extending temporary tax

giveaways, and then you factor in the sort of macroeconomic effects from the bill, such as,

you know, everything from changing investment, but also the consequence of funding mass deportations.

By my calculations, the price tag could be upwards of $6 trillion, but it depends on the

assumptions you make.

That's a big on-paper difference, 3.4 to 6 trillion.

It is.

A lot of, a lot of discrepancy there.

There is.

So I think part of that stems from,

we're in a high debt environment. The bill adds about a trillion dollars in new interest costs,

...