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Trump's budget bill is so bad that just proposing it destroyed the reputation of American credit [1]

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Date: 2025-05-21

In a stark and hypocritical contrast to the days just before Trump took office when Elon and Vivek tanked a bipartisan spending resolution and instead called for single issue bills and denounced omnibus legislation, Donald Trump and his toady Mike Johnson are currently trying to push through a spending bill they have dubbed the “Big Beautiful Bill” (this is in fact its literal name if passed) and it is exactly what it sounds like: a fat omnibus bill encompassing the entire Trump budget and Tax code. This bill is outright atrocious. It seeks to make the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s tax cuts permanent which, when looked at in conjunction with the 2001/2003 George W. Bush era tax cuts, have already added an additional 10 trillion dollars to the US debt. America hasn’t run a budget surplus since the last year of Bill Clinton’s presidency in 2001 and a combined total of 8 times in the last 100 years; we haven't been debt free for more than 200 years in the presidency of Jackson. Now is perhaps the worst time possible to continue to cut taxes (no tax on tips, social security, overtime, deeper tax cuts on billionaires, etc.).

Their grotesque attempts to pay for this bill come almost exclusively from trying to cut Medicare, Medicaid, social security and other essential services which are unlikely to even offset the lost tax receipts. This is a blatant transfer of wealth from the middle and working class directly to the .1% and oligarchs who paid what is sure to be a relatively miniscule several hundred million to get their puppet into power.

Needless to say, this bill would have disastrous effects if passed, but we don’t even have to wait to see what version of it does pass to see the negative consequences. In response to the incredible display of fiscal irresponsibility that this bill reveals, Fitch, S&P and finally Moody’s all removed America’s perfect credit rating for the first time since it got perfect credit worthiness in 1917 and held for the past 108 years. For some context, these three agencies are basically the only institutions in the world that do what they do which is to determine how likely any entity or asset is likely to pay off all of its debts. If anybody wants to know how safe a bond investment is, how likely a company is to pay off its debts and whether it can be trusted with more and whether or not a government will be able to pay off all of its debts issued in bonds.

America has long been seen as a nation that has every advantage possible and thus can do no wrong when it comes to its grotesque debts. Because the dollar is the world’s reserve currency, because the USA is the world’s sole superpower and because the GDP of this nation is the highest of any nation ever to exist, creditors have turned a blind eye to the 40+ years of tax cuts for the rich, the debt to GDP ratio of 120% when the recommended range is 60-90% and we even retained our perfect credit score through the ballooning of the deficit for centuries that now stands at 36 trillion and counting. That’s how bad this budget bill is, that it was the straw that broke the camel’s back after all these heaps of issues goes to show that America has lost its respect, its gravitas and its trustworthiness all because of the unique blend of incompetence and spite held in honor by Trump and his lackies.

I believe that if America doesn’t reverse course and take extreme measures to take financial responsibility for itself then American hegemony will collapse slowly and then all at once. My fear is that we are exiting the slowly phase already and moving into the ‘all at once’ that could cripple the strongest entity to ever exist on the planet.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/5/21/2323426/-Trump-s-budget-bill-is-so-bad-that-just-proposing-it-destroyed-the-reputation-of-American-credit?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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