When it comes to the One Bill Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), two things can be true at once:

The legislation contains some truly important policies, including permanent 100 percent bonus depreciation and other TCJA tax reforms, as well as changes to Medicaid and SNAP, steps toward energy independence, a permanent cap on the mortgage-interest deduction, and some welcome reductions to the Inflation Reduction Act subsidies, among others. That’s great.

But, the bill’s bottom line is fiscally irresponsible because it combines expanded and new tax breaks for special interests, while implementing only modest spending restraints (many of them in the future) relative to projected revenue losses. This bill, even accounting for any economic growth it spawns, exacerbates our already dire fiscal woes. That’s a shame.

I’ve made no secret of my disappointment with the fiscal impact of OBBBA. In fact, I have written pieces that are quite similar to Mark Antonio Wright’s excellent piece yesterday.

And yet, I also want to acknowledge that the final outcome could have been worse if it weren’t for some Republicans in Congress who fought hard to make things better. I find this thought terrifying, but such was the trajectory early on.

Had some Republicans in the House and a few others in the Senate not thrown their full weight into this fight, we likely would have ended up with a bill that consisted purely of tax cuts and tax preferences without even a fig leaf of fiscal discipline. To be sure, that way of thinking still has its fingerprints on the final package. But some fiscal hawks disrupted that path, and in doing so, they delivered meaningful improvements. The passage of this bill sets a new standard that will become the norm: You can’t cut taxes without also cutting spending.

Members who advocate for fiscal responsibility and threaten to withhold their votes if more cuts aren’t implemented are often dismissed as unhelpful or extreme. But as they always do, these members serve as a critical check on both parties. In this case, they reminded their colleagues that tax cuts without spending reform are not fiscally conservative; such cuts risk the fiscal sustainability of this country. These members also pushed back against the idea that expanding the welfare state indefinitely is costless.

Thanks to the persistence of these representatives, the final package included a net reduction of $1.2 trillion in spending (some $1.5 trillion in cuts and over $300 billion in spending increases). Notably, the bill achieves savings in health-care spending ($1.2 trillion), primarily by reforming how states administer Medicaid financing. Those reforms, we are told, will slow the expansion of Medicaid and save hundreds of billions of dollars over time (if the legislators and states implement them honestly).

And yes, this is not enough. These spending restraints are mostly reductions in the growth of spending, and they are also small relative to the massive expansion of Medicaid and food stamps since 2019. However, it is still something considering that, for almost 30 years, it has been nearly impossible to cut any welfare spending. But this is more than we would have received without the Freedom Caucus forcing the issue — a terrifying fact about the state of the Republican Party and politics in general.

Something else is worth acknowledging: Not every Republican fell into the trap of “just cut taxes, any taxes.” As in 2017, some GOPers recognized the importance of pursuing good tax policies and reforms that promote growth and simplicity, rather than simply special interest giveaways, such as the no tax on tips provision or the senior tax credit.

Permanent full expensing is one of the most significant pro-growth changes that can be made to the tax code. At the beginning of this process, hardly anyone believed it could be made permanent. That it ended up in the final bill in permanent form, along with a few other pro-growth changes, is an outstanding policy achievement. Those who pushed for this understood that temporary expensing creates uncertainty and dampens investment incentives. Making it permanent — just as some correctly insisted the corporate rate reduction in 2017 had to be permanent — was a principled stand that will benefit the broader economy for years to come.

So yes, I remain frustrated by the total lack of fiscal seriousness in Washington (that’s an understatement). Too many Republicans believe that all tax cuts are good — no matter what form they take — spending cuts are optional, and piling on debt is no big deal. And too many Democrats believe that we can finance massive expansions of government with ever-heavier taxes on a tiny sliver of wealthy Americans, a fiscal fairytale if ever there was one. But it’s worth noting when a few politicians stand against their colleagues’ worst instincts. Imagine the alternative.

We deserve better from our representatives. This can’t be the best we get because that is a guarantee that it will not end well for this country. We have to demand that this bill not be the end of their fight. We haven’t solved the debt problem, and by some measures, we have made it worse while perpetuating the notion that Americans can vote tons of benefits for themselves and still receive tax cuts.