The so-called Big Beautiful Bill is now law. Weighing in at nearly 900 pages, which took 16 hours to read aloud on the Senate floor, it is doubtful that anyone understands all the ramifications of the bill. Indeed, judging by the quality of the debate, it seems doubtful that there is a good general understanding anywhere.

The Congressional Budget Office starts keeping score with a baseline projection that assumes no changes to existing law. In January, the office projected additional federal deficits of $20 trillion from 2025-2034. That baseline assumed that the temporary tax cuts enacted in 2017 would be allowed to expire as scheduled in 2026. Extending those tax cuts would increase the 2025-2034 deficit by $4.5 trillion over the $20 trillion baseline.

Based on the simple principle that the first step in getting out a hole is to stop digging, one would think $20 trillion of future deficits was already too much. But no. The Big Beautiful Bill made the 2017 tax cuts permanent and added new tax breaks for overtime pay, tip income and Social Security benefit payments.

In a pretense of fiscal conservatism, Republicans feuded among themselves to find ways to keep the increase below the $4.5 trillion cost of simply extending the 2017 tax rates. They cut spending enough to hold the net cost down to $3.4 trillion.

The brunt of the cuts come from Medicaid. This appears to be an area that only the wonkiest super wonk can understand. The party line was that only the undocumented and able-bodied slackers would lose Medicaid coverage. Others, including some Republicans, claimed that millions of needy recipients would lose coverage or hospitals — particularly rural hospitals — would be forced to close. All cut to finance lower tax rates that primarily benefit the wealthy.

The party line on taxes was equally disingenuous. While it was true that tax rates for those with lower incomes would have gone up more, most of the tax dollars saved would be at the top. Suppose a worker with $50,000 of income pays 7% in tax rather than 10%. That’s a 30% rate reduction and $1,500 in tax savings. Suppose someone with $1 million pays 38% instead of 40%. That’s a 5% rate reduction and a $20,000 saving.

In any case, the entire debate ignored the $20 trillion deficit elephant while focusing on the Big Beautiful mouse. Does it really matter whether deficits are $23 trillion instead of $24 trillion over the next 10 years?

Republicans congratulated themselves for opposing the largest tax increase in American history while congratulating themselves for delivering the largest tax cut in American history. This is double-counting. Extending the 2017 tax rates preserves the status quo. It is not a tax cut. Yes, allowing the tax cuts to return to 2017 levels would have been a very large increase. But, hey, when you are $36 trillion in debt and running the largest and most persistent peacetime deficits in history, the largest tax increase in history hardly seems out of place.

Jeffrey Scharf welcomes your comments. Contact him at jeffreyrscharf@gmail.com.