The simple math of the big bill

Planet Money

NPR

Business, News

4.6 • 29.8K Ratings

🗓️ 4 July 2025

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If we think about the economic effects of President Donald Trumps big taxing and spending and domestic policy bill, we can roughly sum it up in one line. It goes something like this:

We will make many big tax cuts permanent and pay for those tax cuts by cutting Medicaid and a few other things and also...by borrowing money.

A lot of money.

Even more than we've already been borrowing over the past twenty years. (And that was already a lot, too!)

Today: simple arithmetic with profound ramifications. Tax cuts, spending cuts, and whether they balance out. (Spoiler: no.)

We look under the hood to see how all this is calculated. And we ask: how will a bigger deficit play out for all of us, in our normal, regular lives?

We've covered a bunch more having to do with the big taxing and spending bill and the federal debt recently on Planet Money and our short daily show The Indicator:

- So, how's this No Tax On Tips thing gonna go?
- A thought experiment on how to fix the national debt problem
- The paperwork trap: A sneaky way to cut Medicaid in the 'One Big Beautiful Bill'?
- The debt limit, the origins of the X Date, and why it all matters
- What's a revenge tax?
- Is the federal debt REALLY that bad?

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This message comes from the Financial Times.
0:02.7	The FT News Briefing brings you the top stories in business and finance
0:06.9	all in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.
0:10.0	Every morning, hear the stories shaping the economy, markets, and more.
0:14.7	Listen to the FT News Briefing, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:20.0	This is Planet Money from NPR.
0:24.9	The bill formerly known as the one big, beautiful bill has officially passed.
0:31.1	Both the Senate.
0:31.8	Being equally divided, the vice president votes and the affirmative and the amendment is agreed to.
0:36.0	And the House.
0:36.9	The motion is adopted.
0:39.0	And it will be signed, or may have already been signed by the president, depending on when you're listening to this.
0:44.3	Meeting President Trump's July 4th deadline.
0:51.4	This is a huge bill, soon to be-be law, with huge economic implications.
0:56.7	And as is the custom here at Planet Money.
0:59.0	Hey there. How are you?
1:00.7	Well, Kelsey Snell, here we are again.
1:03.5	Here we are.
1:04.2	We called our dear colleague Kelsey Snell to talk about this big new law.
1:09.3	Kelsey is NPR's congressional editor and tends to take on
1:13.3	the masochistic task of reading every single word of these huge bills. This bill is north of
1:20.4	800 pages. Kelsey, of course, has read it. Actually, I've read a couple different versions of it.
	...

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