The national debt is roughly the size of the entire U.S. economy and growing by trillions a year — should Congress raise revenue, cut spending, or is the deficit not the emergency it's made out to be?
Each issue breaks into the specific questions Congress actually fights over. Read each position, then head to the interactive version of this issue to mark which reflects your view and build a message to your representatives.
The 2025 tax law made the 2017 tax cuts permanent at a cost of $3.4 to $4.1 trillion over ten years, paid for partly by the largest Medicaid cut in the program's history. CBO projects the permanent extension will cost $3.4 to $4.1 trillion over ten years including interest — a major driver of the deficit growth CBO now projects through 2036. That cost was offset in part by cutting Medicaid by the largest amount in the program's history, and the tax cuts mostly benefit the same income brackets that already gained the most from the original 2017 law.
CBO's own estimates for the law's cost range from $2.4 trillion to over $4.5 trillion depending on the assumptions used — a genuinely large number by any measure. The lower estimate is the initial static score; the higher one includes behavioral responses and interest costs, which is why the range is so wide. CBO's broader Budget and Economic Outlook now projects the federal deficit growing from $1.9 trillion in fiscal year 2026 to $3.1 trillion by 2036, with debt held by the public rising toward 120% of GDP over that period.
The law's tax cuts are pro-growth, and extending rates that were already in effect isn't a new tax cut — it's avoiding a tax increase on everyone. CBO's own dynamic modeling found the bill would grow GDP by an average of 0.5% over the decade, and the administration's Council of Economic Advisers projects even larger growth once the law's full provisions are accounted for. Millions of households had already built the 2017 rates into their financial planning, so letting them expire would have functioned as a broad, unexpected tax increase.
The 2025 tax law raised the debt ceiling by $5 trillion inside the same bill that cut taxes and Medicaid, instead of letting Congress debate it on its own terms. A routine, must-pass increase in the government's borrowing authority got tied to an unrelated and deeply partisan reconciliation bill rather than getting its own standalone vote. That bundling made it harder for members to vote on the debt ceiling increase without also voting on the tax and Medicaid provisions packaged alongside it.
However this particular increase got passed, the recurring pattern of debt-ceiling brinkmanship has repeated under both parties for over a decade. Using the real risk of a U.S. default as leverage in unrelated political fights has happened across multiple administrations, not just this one. Structural reforms that separate the debt ceiling from spending fights entirely — proposals both parties have floated at various points — would remove the recurring crisis without changing how much Congress actually spends.
Raising the debt ceiling inside the reconciliation bill avoided a separate, standalone showdown and the market uncertainty that comes with approaching a default deadline. The debt ceiling itself doesn't authorize any new spending — it just allows the government to pay for spending Congress already appropriated. Handling it as part of a bill that was passing anyway is a legitimate way to clear a routine legal formality without inviting a separate crisis.
The government shut down twice in about seven months, and TSA employees missed a full paycheck during the second one — real harm used as leverage in an unrelated policy fight. A 43-day shutdown from October to November 2025 — the longest in U.S. history — was followed by a roughly ten-week partial shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security from February to April 2026, tied to a stalled dispute over immigration enforcement reform. TSA employees missed a full paycheck during the second shutdown before an executive order restored their pay, meaning federal workers absorbed real financial harm over a fight that had nothing to do with routine funding.
The Senate's unanimous vote to withhold its own pay during shutdowns is a small but genuinely bipartisan sign that both parties see this as a process failure. That May 2026 resolution passed without a single dissenting vote, which is rare in itself and suggests neither party actually wants to defend shutdowns as good governance. The real fix — passing all twelve annual appropriations bills on time, which Congress hasn't managed since 1997 — is something neither party has consistently prioritized even while agreeing shutdowns are a problem.
Shutdowns are a constitutionally legitimate consequence of Congress's own failure to agree on spending, not an executive abuse of power. The Constitution vests the power of the purse in Congress, so when Congress can't reach agreement on time, a lapse in funding for non-essential functions is the system working as designed, however painful that is in practice. Both 2026 shutdowns ended once Congress actually passed the specific bills in dispute, which is the ordinary legislative process resolving itself rather than a sign of deeper dysfunction.
The FY2026 spending deal cut IRS enforcement funding by 8% to its lowest inflation-adjusted level since 1988, which mostly benefits the wealthiest filers who can afford sophisticated tax avoidance. The deal also rescinded most of the remaining Inflation Reduction Act funding meant to rebuild the IRS's capacity to audit complex, high-income returns. Every dollar cut from IRS enforcement is estimated to lose the government more than a dollar in uncollected taxes owed, which makes this a net cost to the deficit, not a savings.
The final FY2026 deal landed well short of the House's original 45% enforcement cut, settling on 8% instead — a real compromise even if it's still a cut. The House had initially proposed a 45% enforcement cut and a 23% overall cut to the IRS budget. The final deal split the difference between that steeper ask and the Senate's push to hold enforcement funding flat at 2025 levels, landing at an 8% enforcement cut and a 9% cut to the base budget.
The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act gave the IRS an unprecedented $80 billion funding boost with minimal ongoing congressional oversight, and rescinding the unspent portion restores normal accountability. That multi-year IRA funding largely bypassed the normal annual appropriations process, which is how Congress typically maintains oversight of agency spending. Setting IRS funding through the standard appropriations process, as the FY2026 deal did, restores that oversight over an agency whose modernization spending had shown limited measurable results.
Counting on tariff revenue to offset the 2025 tax law's cost treats an unstable, legally contested revenue source as if it were reliable. Tariffs function as a tax on American consumers and importers, not foreign exporters, so this revenue is effectively being collected from Americans, not the countries the tariffs target. Ongoing litigation over the President's tariff authority could eliminate a significant share of that projected revenue with little warning, which makes it a shaky foundation for budget planning.
CBO's own baseline now treats tariff revenue as a real, if unusually volatile, part of the federal government's income — a genuine change from prior decades. For most of recent history, tariffs were a rounding error in the federal budget; CBO now projects them as a meaningful and growing revenue stream. Whether that revenue proves durable depends on trade negotiations and court rulings — including a February 2026 Supreme Court ruling that the President's tariffs under emergency powers exceeded his authority — that are still working their way through the system.
Tariff revenue is now large enough that CBO projects total federal revenue will exceed its 50-year historical average as a share of GDP, even after the 2025 tax cuts. That's a real sign trade policy can meaningfully help offset lost income-tax revenue. It does this without raising income tax rates directly on American workers and businesses, which is the alternative most deficit-reduction proposals would require.