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The fight over President Donald Trump’s so-called big, beautiful bill is turning ugly.

After passing the GOP-controlled House, the bill has moved to the Senate, where Republicans are facing a bitter divide over how to balance their competing priorities.

They want to extend and expand Trump’s tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit the rich and come at a steep price tag, as well as bolster immigration enforcement and defense spending. However, some are reluctant to do so while increasing the national debt by almost $2.6 trillion and slashing Medicaid benefits. 

Republicans want to pass the bill by July 4 through a complex process known as budget reconciliation, which requires only 51 votes to pass. There are 53 Republicans in the Senate, but it’s unclear whether they will be able to resolve their disagreements in time.

Some Republican senators, including Ron Johnson (R-WI.) and Rand Paul (R-KY), have criticized the current version of the bill as unreasonable. Trump megadonor (and newly sworn enemy) Elon Musk has called on lawmakers to rework the legislation, which he dubbed a “disgusting abomination.” 

"Call your Senator, Call your Congressman, Bankrupting America is NOT ok! KILL the BILL,” Musk said in a post on X Wednesday.

Speaker Mike Johnson has said that Musk is “flat wrong” about the bill and that there is not enough time to go back to the drawing board.

So, what exactly is in the bill, and what does it mean — for the deficit and for Americans? We break it down, in charts.

The bill would cause the US deficit to skyrocket

This spending bill is expensive, and short of truly drastic cuts to nearly all social programs (and perhaps not even with such cuts), it’s not clear that the government could feasibly pass it without increasing the national debt. 

The version that passed the House would raise the deficit by trillions of dollars over the next decade, not accounting for the potential effects the bill would have on the US economy. That spending is concentrated between 2025 and 2028, coinciding with the next presidential election.

Republicans once campaigned against raising the national debt during the Obama administration, framing it as a national security threat and a burden to future generations. But it’s no longer the rallying cry it once was. 

There are reasons to be concerned about a growing national debt. As my colleague Dylan Matthews writes, the bond market is already bristling at the prospect of such a significant increase in the deficit, a warning of potential economic downturn or even further increasing debt due to higher servicing costs if the bill becomes law. 

Tax cuts are what make the bill so expensive

Trump wants to build on the tax cuts he passed during his first term. They are set to expire this year if Congress does not act, and the spending bill would keep them in place. It would also add some new ones, including the elimination of taxes on tips.

That is going to cost the US government. A breakdown of the bill’s budgetary effects published by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) shows that the House Ways and Means Committee, which presides over tax policy, would be permitted to contribute an additional $3.8 trillion to the deficit — far more than any other House committee. That’s at least in part because tax revenue would be lower under the bill. 

Meanwhile, the Armed Services and Homeland Security committees are the only others where Trump is seeking significant increases in spending as he seeks to deliver on his campaign promise of “mass deportations” with assistance from the military.

Any spending cuts in other areas aren’t nearly enough to counterbalance the resulting increase in the US deficit. That would likely require Republicans to slash public benefits even further than they already have in this bill. While they haven’t gone so far as to touch Social Security benefits, they have gone after Medicaid and insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act.

For more, including how the bill could impact people on Medicaid, check out Nicole's full story here.

⮕ Keep tabs

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