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That’s a Big, Beautiful Bill… But Who’s Paying?

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At +$3-$3.8 trillion in debt over the next 10 years, the Big Beautiful Bill has a big price tag, too.

Peter ReaganBullion.Directory precious metals analysis 06 June, 2025
By Peter Reagan

Financial Market Strategist at Birch Gold Group

What do you do if you find that you consistently overspend your income, borrowing money just to meet your obligations? If it’s you or me, we find ways to cut costs or make more money so that we can live within our means. After all, no money means no food or shelter.

That’s not how the federal government works, though.

The latest fiscal budget, also known as the Big Beautiful Bill, does cut costs… but increases spending a lot more. And that is part of what is causing some people, including debt hawks and fiscally conservative Republicans, to speak out. To break ranks. Even to say they “regret” voting for it!

That’s mostly politics, though. We’ll start there, then talk through the economic impact this deficit spending problem has on you and me.

 

Adding another $3-$3.8 trillion to the national debt?

Before we get into what they said, there’s some details about the “Big Beautiful Bill” to go over so that you can have some context

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates the bill, as written, would add about $3.1 trillion to the national debt over a decade with interest, to a total $53 trillion. The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimates a higher tally: $3.8 trillion, including interest and economic effects.

More than an extra three trillion dollars to the national debt!

What happened to DOGE? What happened to being responsible with our money and reducing the budget deficit at the same time?

Maybe that’s why former DOGE head Elon Musk has been blowing up his X account with attacks on Congress for passing the 2025 budget. I’m not sure whether he’s more angry over being sidelined, or genuinely outraged over the additional spending. Musk seems determined to have a blistering public feud with the President over this. (Let’s be honest, though – trading barbs on social media is not going to fix anything.)

Musk is not the only outspoken CEO who has concerns about the federal deficit and the national debt. Erik Revell with Fox Business writes,

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon warned in a new interview that the U.S. government’s rising debt and budget deficits are a problem… and offered his thoughts on how reforms should move forward.

Now, remember, Jamie Dimon was considered a short-list candidate for Secretary of the Treasury last year. (In other words, a much more credible source than Musk.) Rather than ramping up deficit spending, Dimon suggested:

“The real focus should be growth, pro-business, proper deregulation, permitting reform, getting rid of blue tape, getting skills in schools, get that growth going – that’s the best way.”

Note: I never saw the words “blue tape” used like that before, so I looked it up. We all know about “red tape” – government regulations at the federal, state, county and city levels that make it impossible to accomplish anything. “Blue tape” is the same problem, but one that comes from the sector itself, whether from other businesses in the same industry, trade groups or non-government watchdogs.

Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio has warned us repeatedly of an “economic heart attack” due to continued deficit spending and the unsustainable national debt. In fact, he just released a book on exactly this topic (summary here).

Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary has some concerns, too:

I read all these bills through the eyes of small business… Somebody should fix this in the big, beautiful bill, because it’s not beautiful for small business.

The bipartisan Peter G. Peterson Foundation issued a grim forecast:

Over the next decade, the U.S. government’s interest payments on the national debt are now projected to total $13.8 trillion – the highest dollar amount for interest in any historical 10-year period and nearly double the total spent over the past two decades after adjusting for inflation. In fact, by pretty much any measurement, interest on the national debt will soon grow beyond its highest level since 1940, when such data were first collected.

Even worse, the organization estimates that interest payments alone on the national debt would consume 18.4% of all government revenue. That’s a lot to pay for debt service, and it’s only going to get worse.

Possibly in response to these concerns, or maybe because they finally got a chance to actually read all 1,000+ pages of the bill, some major GOP figures are now calling the nation’s economic future into question.

 

Republicans begin to question national debt sustainability

Two notable GOP stalwarts spoke up against the “Big Beautiful Bill” – Kentucky Senator Rand Paul and Representative Thomas Massie:

Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky was one of two Republicans to vote against the House measure, calling it a “debt bomb ticking” and noting that it “dramatically increases deficits in the near term.”

Representative Scott Perry (R-PA)., a loyal MAGA member, says Elon Musk was “right to call out House Leadership” this week. Our friend Dr. Ron Paul agrees:

Thankful for the “Elon-Quake” from @elonmusk yesterday, warning that the “Big Beautiful Bill” is a huge danger to our future, our kids’ future, and our grandkids’ future…

Even die-hard Trump loyalist Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) now publicly regrets her vote in favor of the bill.

What’s the problem? According to Senator Paul:

The math doesn’t really add up.

It really does come down to simple math.

Yes, growing the real economy (not GDP, that’s an abstraction, but our national prosperity) is good.

Economic growth means more jobs, more business investment and greater productivity – all of which boost workers’ incomes and everyone’s standard of living. The government benefits by collecting greater tax revenues – which could help to pay down the debt, increasing our purchasing power.

But that’s not how our federal government works. If you’ve been paying attention for even five minutes, you’ve figured them out:

  • During the good times, increased tax revenue means they have more money to spend 
  • During the bad times, decreased tax revenue means they have to spend money to boost the economy

Take a look at annual federal expenditures since 2000 – see how the line consistently trends up, with higher highs and higher lows?

fred-gov-spending

All this debt isn’t just an abstract economic concern. It has real effects on every American family…

 

More debt cannot solve the debt problem

Now, if you’re new to the world of how money and spending and economics really works, then you may not understand why federal deficit spending and a rising national debt is a bad thing.

In a nutshell – more deficit spending and more national debt means we all get less for our money. Federal debt and federal spending cause inflation.

But don’t take my word for it! William W. Beach with the Economic Policy Innovation Center offers just one recent example from 2020-2021:

As a result of unprecedented deficit spending and financial accommodation of these deficits by the Federal Reserve, nearly historic inflation occurred. [emphasis added] 

Remember the inflation over the last few years? How everyday Americans struggled to make ends meet while their purchasing power plummeted?

Yes, that was caused by the massive amount of government spending during the pandemic panic.

The question of whether the federal government needed to spend that money due to the pandemic and lockdowns doesn’t matter. The national debt rose by $13 trillion from 2020-2024!

Ray Dalio and Jamie Dimon, Senator Paul and Representative Perry all have the same concern. That the Big Beautiful Bill will destroy our purchasing power faster than it drives economic growth.

To be clear, though, those dissenting voices are in the minority.

 

Congress is incapable of solving this problem

When our Founding Fathers gave Congress “the power of the purse,” the responsibility to tax and spend public money for the national government, they did so within strict limits. Because our nation was on a gold standard. Congress didn’t have the luxury of endless borrowing; every dollar spent had to be backed by physical gold and silver. Not simply conjured out of thin air.

Again, don’t take my word for it! Back in 2013, economists Carmen Reinhart and Ken Rogoff (coauthors of must-read This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly) published a review of the Federal Reserve’s 100-year anniversary. That paper contained this astonishing chart:

Yellow shading indicates years the U.S. dollar was backed by gold or silver. Source: Shifting Mandates: The Federal Reserve’s First Centennial by Reinhart & Rogoff.

Yellow shading indicates years the U.S. dollar was backed by gold or silver. Source: Shifting Mandates: The Federal Reserve’s First Centennial by Reinhart & Rogoff.

You can clearly see that, except for times of war, the cost of living was virtually unchanged for over a century! From about 1780-1905, buying a house and raising children and sending them to school and feeding your family – it all cost the same. Prices did rise during times of crisis, because Congress sold debt to finance wars. But when the crisis was over, the debt was paid back and prices came back down! 

I added the yellow shading to indicate the gold standard (that brief interruption in the middle is due to the Civil War). Note how the cost of living soared ever since.

As enraging as I find this, there’s very little I can do about it.

I can’t make Congress take our national deficit seriously. I can’t prevent the federal government from spending money. I cannot return our nation to the gold standard.

What I can do, though, is to make sure my personal financial situation is sound. We can’t return the nation to the gold standard, but we can put ourselves on our own, personal gold standards. We can incorporate the wisdom of our Founding Fathers (look at that chart again!)

I strongly recommend you to consider whether your personal finances would be more stable, whether you’d be more prosperous over the long-term, if you made a similar move. If you want to learn more, start your due diligence with a free copy of our  2025 Precious Metals Information Kit.

Peter Reaganbullion.directory author Peter Reagan

Peter Reagan is a financial market strategist at Birch Gold Group, one of America’s leading precious metals dealers, specializing in providing gold IRAs and retirement-focused precious metals portfolios.

Peter’s in-depth analysis and commentary is published across major investment portals, news channels, popular US conservative websites and most frequently on Birch Gold Group’s own website.

This article was originally published here

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