A clash over the reconciliation bill’s effect on the federal debt imperils efforts to pass the sweeping Republican tax and spending bill in the Senate.

The reconciliation legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, would extend much of the tax cuts from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, add new tax cuts, and increase spending on border security. Those additions to the federal deficit would be partially offset by spending reductions, including through the Medicaid and food stamp programs. Because the legislation would add trillions of dollars to the federal debt, it faces scrutiny in the Senate, particularly from fiscal hawks such as Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who maintains that federal deficits are already too large.

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In the past few days, Republican proponents of the bill have worked hard to defend the measure as fiscally responsible.

They argue that the tax cuts will spur economic growth, offsetting some of the costs.

White House Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, for example, has argued that the bill’s fiscal effects would be far more salutary than would be indicated by the analyses offered by the Congressional Budget Office, which is Congress’s in-house budget scorekeeper. Miller has maintained that the CBO projections are flawed because the centerpiece of the bill is merely an extension of the individual tax cuts included in the 2017 overhaul, which were set to expire at the end of this year.

“As for the deficit, maintaining current tax rates by definition cannot add a penny to the deficit,” Miller said Monday on X. “It doesn’t ‘cost’ the government anything to keep current rates in place. What costs the government money is spending, and this bill cuts spending dramatically — reducing the actual budget deficit as a result.”

Many conservatives are receptive to the argument that an extension of tax cuts should not be deemed an addition to deficits. Advancing American Freedom, the advocacy group founded by former Vice President Mike Pence, is circulating a memo telling Congress to disregard the CBO’s deficit projections.

“Rather than allow unreliable estimates to upend or delay much-needed tax reform, Congress should move forward immediately to make as many of TCJA’s provisions permanent and protect the American people from a major tax hike from going into effect at the end of 2025,” the memo said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) over the weekend argued that the growth sparked by the reconciliation legislation would offset the deficit hit.

“It’s not going to add to the debt,” Johnson said on NBC’s Meet the Press. Johnson insisted that Trump is concerned about the country’s debt and wants to change the debt trajectory.

“I’m telling you, this is going to reduce the deficit,” Johnson said, and discussed the difference in some of these models with dynamic versus static scoring.

Similarly, Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought pushed back on the idea that the bill added to the national debt.

“This bill doesn’t increase the deficit or hurt the debt,” he said on CNN over the weekend in response to comments by Tesla founder Elon Musk, who said he was “disappointed” by the legislation and that it would increase budget deficits.

But budget experts have pushed back against those arguments from Republicans.

“So there’s zero question that the current form of the bill adds too much to the debt — we shouldn’t be talking about trillions in new borrowing, we should be talking about trillions in savings,” Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told the Washington Examiner on Monday.

As for the argument that the tax cuts will pay for themselves through economic growth, Republican proponents of the legislation might find that a tough sell to some members of their caucus.

An analysis of a version of the bill from the Joint Committee on Taxation, which provides analysis of tax provisions for Congress, estimated that the tax cuts would increase inflation-adjusted gross domestic product growth by just 0.03 percentage points on average over the next decade. That would translate to only about $100 billion in added tax revenues, not nearly enough to offset the legislation’s multitrillion-dollar revenue losses.

Some Republicans have dismissed the estimates from the scorekeepers, saying they are unduly pessimistic. But even outside groups receptive to tax cuts don’t foresee major growth resulting from the tax legislative package, in large part because it doesn’t include much in the way of new provisions that would increase incentives for investing capital and labor.

The Tax Foundation, for instance, which typically favors lower tax rates, found the bill would increase the 10-year budget deficit by $2.6 trillion from 2025 through 2034 on a conventional basis and by $1.7 trillion on a dynamic basis, if growth were assumed.

In the House, lawmakers such as Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Andy Harris (R-MD) threatened to hold up the bill unless there were deeper spending cuts. They succeeded in some of their goals, including getting the implementation dates for cuts to Medicaid moved up. In total, they were able to get $1.6 trillion in mandatory spending cuts inserted into the legislation.

But some say those cuts are still too paltry and predict that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act could face one big buzzsaw in the Senate.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has said that the upper chamber will change the legislation “significantly” and said “of course not,” when asked if he supports the legislation in its current form.

MacGuineas said that she hopes the Senate will find more ways to generate far more savings than the House did.

“$1.5 trillion out of $86 trillion isn’t even a drop in the bucket,” she said, citing Congressional Budget Office projections that over the next decade, the federal government will spend nearly $86 trillion.

Sen. Johnson has said he would vote against the reconciliation bill unless it contained many more spending cuts.

“It’s a lot easier to pressure House members than it is us; that’s just a basic fact,” Johnson said.

Still, House leadership is optimistic that not too much of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will be changed in the Senate. For instance, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) told the Washington Examiner that he thinks the vast majority of the legislation will survive the Senate.

Smith said his team has been working on the legislation “hand-in-glove” with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-ID) for months.

DENTISTS AND ACCOUNTANTS FACE HIT FROM GOP TAX BILL

“Of course, I’m sure that there will be some changes made over there, and probably will make the bill an even better bill,” Smith said. “But I would say 95% of the current bill will be intact. I think you’ll see a few things changed around the edges.”