Roving Periscope: Trump’s ‘BBB’ wins; crises ahead as national debt to mount to $40 trillion

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: For once, he can sleep in peace.

After re-entering the White House on January 20, President Doland Trump—after several ups and downs, and twists and U-turns—tasted his first legialstive victory in the US Congress on Friday when the House of Representatives also passed, though with a thin majority, his controversial “One Big, Beautiful Bill” which his frenemy Elon Musk recently condemned as “an abomination.”

The “big, beautiful bill,” as he calls it, is a wide-ranging package that includes many key pieces of his agenda – delivering on promises he made on the campaign trail in 2024.

It also, however, contains the seeds of political peril for the President and his Grand Old Party in the years ahead.

Musk had even threatened to form a new political outfit, The America Party (TAP), if the US Congress passed the controversial bill, and that he would fund and unseat the lawmakers supporting the legislation. It would be interesting to watch him now!

That Trump and his team could shepherd the controversial legislation through the US Congress despite narrow majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate is, however, no small achievement, the media reported on Saturday.

His success required him and his allies to win over budget hawks within his Republican Party who wanted to slash government spending, as well as centrists who suspected cuts to social programmes.

When this US Congressional session started in January 2025, many doubted whether House Republicans could even agree to return Congressman Mike Johnson to the Speaker’s chair, let alone agree on major pieces of legislation.

Agree they did, however – as did Republicans in the Senate, a notoriously unwieldy chamber.

The spending package approved by US Congress lawmakers directs about USD 150 billion (£110bn) in new spending for border security, detention centres and immigration enforcement officers. Another USD 150 billion is allocated for military expenditures, including the President’s “Golden Dome” missile defence programme, an upgraded Iron Dome of Israel, Trump announced recently.

Where is he going to get this big money from?

The really big numbers, however, are in the tax cuts in this legislation. They amount to more than USD 4.5 trillion over 10 years.

Some of these are cuts that were first enacted in Trump’s first term (2017-20), and were set to expire before the bill makes them permanent. Others, like ending taxes on tips and overtime, where 2024 campaign promises that are implemented by will end in 2028.

All this adds up to massive new debt for the US, totalling over USD 37 trillion in May 2025. The White House contends that the tax cuts will spur economic growth that will generate sufficient new revenue, when taken alongside tariff collections.

But outside projections suggest that this legislation will add more than USD 3 trillion in new US debt.

As critics like Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky have pointed out, the legislation raises the amount of new debt the federal government can issue by USD 5 trillion – a step that would not be necessary if the White House truly believed their budget projections.

Paul and others like tech multibillionaire Elon Musk have warned that this massive amount of debt will be growing burden on the federal government, as interest payments crowd out other spending and drive up interest rates. A fiscal reckoning is coming, they warn.

Another senator who voted against the legislation, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, had a different warning for Trump and his party. In a fiery speech on the floor of the chamber, he accused the President of breaking a promise to those who supported him – citing the bill’s cuts worth approximately USD 1 trillion to Medicaid, a government-run health insurance programme for low-income Americans.

“Republicans are about to make a mistake on healthcare and betray a promise,” he said, declaring that more than 660,000 people in North Carolina alone would be “pushed off” Medicaid.

A year after Trump made inroads with working-class Americans, including minority voters who traditionally supported opposing Democrats, his legislation will cause nearly 12 million Americans to lose Medicaid coverage in the next 10 years, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

Democrats are already preparing an onslaught of attacks against Republicans for what they say is legislation that cuts social service in order to provide tax cuts to wealthier Americans.

Although those cuts won’t come into effect until after next year’s congressional midterm elections, Democrats will try to remind American voters of the consequences the decisions Republicans made over the past few weeks.

Trump is preparing what should be a celebratory bill signing ceremony on  July 4- American Independence Day – and will tout his ability to govern not just through executive order, but also through enacting new law.

But the fight to define the benefits – and consequences – of this bill is just beginning.