Faced with soaring deficits, an aging population, a teetering pension system, unsustainable health-care obligations, $1 trillion in annual interest costs, rising long-term bond yields and net public debt at around 100% of gross domestic product, what’s a country to do?

For the 119th Congress, the answer has been simple: Tax less and borrow more. As Republican leaders ponder yet another party-line spending bill — expected to include at least $95 billion in new outlays with no offsetting revenue — they might reflect for a moment on America’s budgetary crisis in the making.

Over less than two years, this Congress has worsened the nation’s fiscal trajectory dramatically. Its main accomplishment, last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, will by itself increase deficit spending by at least $4.1 trillion from 2025 to 2034. Add another $1 trillion or so once many of the law’s “temporary” tax cuts are inevitably extended, and the US will soon be looking at annual deficits approaching $3 trillion and a debt-to-GDP ratio exceeding post-war highs.

Making matters worse, lawmakers have twice slashed Internal Revenue Service funding, by a total of about $32 billion. Estimates from the Congressional Budget Office imply that each dollar these measures rescinded from tax enforcement could lead to about $3.27 in lost revenue, meaning they’ll actually add about $73 billion in net deficits. A huge reduction in the agency’s workforce hardly helped.

What about the spending cuts Republicans have promised? Although the OBBBA’s backers touted some $900 billion in Medicaid savings, achieved largely by slashing coverage, this merely slowed the program’s annual growth rate and was dwarfed by the bill’s tax cuts. A rescissions bill also cut overseas aid and public broadcasting funding — at significant cost to national prestige and soft power — saving a grand total of $9 billion through 2035.Even these meager efforts have been partly negated by repeated splurges.

In addition to the tax cuts, the Secure America Act enacted in June included about $70 billion in duplicative funding for immigration enforcement and border security. This latest bill, as passed by the House, would add some $73 billion to pay for the war in Iran, among other things; a $12 billion bailout for farmers harmed by the administration’s trade policies; and $10 billion for dubious “election security” measures. (The Senate’s stalled blueprint would double the latter amount.)

For its part, the White House has worsened this picture at almost every turn. Its immigration crackdown alone could increase deficits by $500 billion over a decade. Its Department of Government Efficiency, created to cut spending, may have done the opposite: Its claimed savings have been largely illusory while one analysis found that the costs it imposed — from lost productivity and chaotic personnel decisions — may have reached $135 billion last year.

Perhaps most egregiously, Congress has sat by as the White House has imposed a global tariff regime, at an annual cost of $900 or so per household. It’s true that tariffs raise revenue. Yet they do so in a way that’s uniquely misguided: They tax a base that erodes over time while impeding the investment and productivity growth needed to stabilize debt in the long term. For all that, they might yield $2.1 trillion over 10 years — or less than 9% of projected deficits.

If Congress wants to get serious about these matters, there’s no shortage of available proposals. A bipartisan group in the House has recently introduced a bill that would improve spending transparency, make much-needed reforms to the budget process, establish a fiscal commission and adopt a formal goal of reducing annual deficits to 3% of GDP within a decade. Nothing revolutionary, but it’s a start.

As things stand, across nearly two years of unified government, Republicans have imposed enormous new costs on Americans with precious little to show for it.

Come November, they shouldn’t be surprised if voters say they’ve had enough.

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