Can Trump fix the national debt? Republican senators, many investors and even Elon Musk have doubts

By JOSH BOAK Associated Press WASHINGTON AP President Donald Trump faces the challenge of convincing Republican senators global investors voters and even Elon Musk that he won t bury the federal administration in debt with his multitrillion-dollar tax breaks package The response so far from financial markets has been skeptical as Trump seems unable to trim deficits as promised All of this rhetoric about cutting trillions of dollars of spending has come to nothing and the tax bill codifies that reported Michael Strain director of economic initiative studies at the American Enterprise Institute a right-leaning think tank There is a level of concern about the competence of Congress and this administration and that makes adding a whole bunch of money to the deficit riskier The White House has viciously lashed out at anyone who has voiced concern about the debt snowballing under Trump even though it did exactly that in his first term after his tax cuts White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt opened her briefing Thursday by saying she desired to debunk certain false insists about his tax cuts Leavitt noted the blatantly wrong claim that the One Big Beautiful Bill increases the deficit is based on the Congressional Budget Office and other scorekeepers who use shoddy assumptions and have historically been terrible at forecasting across Democrat and Republican administrations alike House Speaker Mike Johnson piled onto Congress number crunchers on Sunday telling NBC s Meet the Press The CBO sometimes gets projections correct but they re constantly off every single time when they project economic enhancement They inevitably underestimate the expansion that will be brought about by tax cuts and reduction in regulations But Trump himself has suggested that the lack of sufficient spending cuts to offset his tax reductions came out of the need to hold the Republican congressional coalition together We have to get a lot of votes Trump revealed last week We can t be cutting That has left the administration betting on the hope that economic advancement can do the trick a belief that sparse outside of Trump s orbit think is viable Greater part economists consider the non-partisan CBO to be the foundational standard for assessing policies though it does not produce cost estimates for actions taken by the executive branch such as Trump s unilateral tariffs Tech billionaire Musk who was until in recent days part of Trump s inner sanctum as the leader of the Department of Administration Efficiency informed CBS News I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill frankly which increases the budget deficit not just decreases it and undermines the work that the DOGE unit is doing FILE Elon Musk flashes his T-shirt that reads DOGE to the media as he walks on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington March AP Photo Jose Luis Magana File Federal debt keeps rising The tax and spending cuts that passed the House last month would add more than trillion to the national debt in the coming decade if all of them are allowed to continue according to the Committee for a Responsible Financial Budget a fiscal watchdog group To make the bill s price tag appear lower various parts of the act are set to expire This same tactic was used with Trump s tax cuts and it set up this year s dilemma in which several of the tax cuts in that earlier package will sunset next year unless Congress renews them But the debt is a much bigger difficulty now than it was eight years ago Investors are demanding the administration pay a higher premium to keep borrowing as the total debt has crossed trillion The interest rate on a -year Treasury Note is around up dramatically from the roughly rate being charged when the tax cuts became law The White House Council of Economic Advisers argues that its policies will unleash so much rapid expansion that the annual budget deficits will shrink in size relative to the overall market putting the U S regime on a fiscally sustainable path The council argues the financial market would expand over the next four years at an annual average of about instead of the Congressional Budget Office s expected and as numerous as million jobs would be created or saved Council chair Stephen Miran advised reporters that when the enhancement being forecast by the White House is coupled with expected revenues from tariffs the expected budget deficits will fall The tax cuts will increase the supply of money for resources the supply of workers and the supply of domestically produced goods all of which by Miran s logic would cause faster increase without creating new inflationary pressures I do want to assure everyone that the deficit is a very essential concern for this administration Miran explained White House budget director Russell Vought advised reporters the idea that the bill is in any way harmful to debt and deficits is fundamentally untrue Economists doubt Trump s plan can spark enough rise to reduce deficits Bulk outside economists expect additional debt would keep interest rates higher and slow overall economic enhancement as the cost of borrowing for homes cars businesses and even college educations would increase This just adds to the trouble future policymakers are going to face commented Brendan Duke a former Biden administration aide now at the Center on Budget and Plan Priorities a liberal think tank Duke disclosed that with the tax cuts in the bill set to expire in lawmakers would be dealing with Social Defense Medicare and expiring tax cuts at the same time Kent Smetters faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model disclosed the upsurge projections from Trump s economic association are a work of fiction He commented the bill would lead specific workers to choose to work fewer hours in order to qualify for Medicaid I don t know of any serious forecaster that has meaningfully raised their development forecast because of this regulation mentioned Harvard University professor Jason Furman who was the Council of Economic Advisers chair under the Obama administration These are mostly not growth- and competitiveness-oriented tax cuts And in fact the higher long-term interest rates will go the other way and hurt expansion The White House s inability so far to calm deficit concerns is stirring up political blowback for Trump as the tax and spending cuts approved by the House now move to the Senate Republican Sens Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky have both expressed concerns about the likely deficit increases with Paul saying Sunday there are enough GOP senators to stall the bill until deficits are addressed I think there are four of us at this point who would oppose the measure if the bill at least is not modified in a good direction Paul explained on CBS Face the Nation The GOP will own the debt once they vote for this Paul explained Four Republican holdouts would be enough to halt the bill in the Senate where the party holds a three-seat majority Trump banking on tariff revenues to help The White House is also banking that tariff revenues will help cover the additional deficits even though new court rulings cast doubt on the legitimacy of Trump declaring an economic urgency to impose sweeping taxes on imports Related Articles After talks with Zelenskyy and Macron US senators warn Putin is preparing for more war Chinese apprentice struck a chord emphasizing humanity during Harvard commencement speech Gov Gretchen Whitmer says Trump recounted her he would not pardon men convicted in kidnapping plot The Department of Ability axes billion in clean resource project grants FACT FOCUS Trump s indicates about remedial math at Harvard don t add up When Trump revealed his near-universal tariffs in April he specifically declared his policies would generate enough new revenues to start paying down the national debt His comments dovetailed with remarks by aides including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that yearly budget deficits could be more than halved It s our turn to prosper and in so doing use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt and it ll all happen very speedily Trump reported two months ago as he talked up his import taxes and encouraged lawmakers to pass the separate tax and spending cuts The Trump administration is correct that rise can help reduce deficit pressures but it s not enough on its own to accomplish the task according to new research by economists Douglas Elmendorf Glenn Hubbard and Zachary Liscow Ernie Tedeschi director of economics at the Budget Lab at Yale University commented additional improvement doesn t even get us close to where we need to be The governing body would need trillion of deficit reduction over the next years just to stabilize the debt Tedeschi mentioned And even though the White House says the tax cuts would add to development preponderance of the cost goes to preserve existing tax breaks so that s unlikely to boost the financial system meaningfully It s treading water Tedeschi noted