Your browser is: WebKit 537.36. This browser is out of date so some features on this site might break. Try a different browser or update this browser. Learn more.
Kathryn Anne Edwards, Columnist

The Budget Bill Is Creating a Republican Existential Crisis

If tax cuts don’t spur economic growth and a growing deficit requires new revenue, what is the purpose of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”?

Sign of the times.

Photographer: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images North America

The Republican budget bill, a $3.7 trillion tax cut packaged with $1.2 trillion in spending cuts, is deeply problematic legislation from almost any perspective — including those of its authors. The Congressional Budget Office has the details about how it will be expensive and ineffectual. But for Republicans, President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” is creating what amounts to an existential crisis.

For half a century, Republicans have been committed to the policy of lower taxes to aid the economy — impervious to any evidence that tax cuts are inefficient and prohibitively expensive. At this point, to walk away from the bill is to abandon their economic raison d’etre.