A Couple of Charts

 

Bobby Kogan and Jared Bernstein, a couple of economists at the Center for American Progress, published a study about the national debt that included a chart I’ve been wanting someone to create for some time now. It shows where our national debt is compared with where it would be without the Bush and Trump tax cuts. Here’s the chart.

This data shows clearly that our massive debt, which just passed $40 trillion and is now more than 100 percent of GDP, is pretty much a function of Republican tax cuts. The original chart is interactive, so you can see what the numbers are for any given year. For instance, the debt for 2026 is projected to be 102.5 percent of GDP. Without the Bush and Trump tax cuts that benefited primarily the wealthy, the debt would have been 60.43 percent of GDP. Quite manageable. The chart projects debt with and without the tax cuts through 2055. In that year, the national debt is projected to be 187.55 percent of GDP. Without the tax cuts, that figure drops to 47.85 percent of GDP.

Of course, these numbers are projections, based on a slew of assumptions, but that is how economics works. This reminds me of one of my favorite economist jokes. It seems a physicist, an engineer, and an economist were stranded on a desert island. On the beach, they found a can of tuna that had washed ashore. The physicist suggested they could build a fire, and the heat would cause the tuna to expand and explode the can. The engineer proposed that he could calculate the stresses on the can and arrange the three of them in the correct places around the fire to catch the tuna as it came flying out of the can. The engineer said, “Wait a minute. First, let’s assume we had a can opener.” My other favorite economist joke is that economists are people who work with numbers who don’t have the personality to be accountants. I have an economist friend who would take umbrage with the second joke. He is, after all, a cartoonist in his spare time. I’m not sure he would find the first joke funny.

Anyway, I’m assuming that Kogan and Bernstein used a lot of data and made the best projections they could, given the large number of factors involved. What we can be sure of is that the debt would definitely be much smaller if Republican congresses had not enacted the two tax cuts (and the extension of the Trump tax cuts in last year’s Big Ugly Billionaire Bill Act, or BUBBA). We are in a debt crisis not, as Republicans insist, because we are spending too much on things like Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP, but because we gave the wealthy two massive tax cuts and shrunk our revenue stream significantly. And if Congress had not enacted the Reagan tax cuts, we would probably be sitting on a surplus rather than a ballooning debt.

The other chart I came across recently is an Economist/YouGov poll showing Donald Trump’s approval rating on several issues from January 26, 2025, through August 10, 2026. Apparently, not many Americans agree with Donald that we are in a “Golden Age.” Here’s the chart.

Of course, if you listen to Donald, this is all just fake news. I guess we’ll see in November. A surprising poll came out yesterday, though, in deep-red Arkansas. A Hendrix College (Conway, Arkansas) poll shows Democratic Senate candidate Hallie Shoffner now leading Republican Senator Tom Cotton, who is seeking a third term. Shoffner is a sixth-generation farmer who closed her farming operation last year because of the economic crisis facing Arkansas farmers. The damage caused by trade wars and higher diesel and fertilizer costs are making it very difficult for farmers. Shoffner said she has met voters across Arkansas who backed Trump in recent elections, but who now feel betrayed by what is happening to their communities. Yes, all fake news.

BUBBA

 

Last week, I read an article in the Salt Lake Tribune reprinted from the New York Times about how hospitals across the country are seeing more and more uninsured patients in their emergency rooms and clinics. Some reported an increase of about 20 percent. Many hospital executives attributed this trend to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of July 2025 that provided trillions of dollars in tax cuts and paid for a portion of them with cuts to Medicaid, SNAP, and a few other items, including cuts to clean-energy initiatives. Democrats warned of the impact this bill would have on millions of Americans, but the Republicans didn’t care. They passed this bill without a single Democratic vote. I prefer to call this legislation the Big Ugly Billionaire Bill Act, or BUBBA. And BUBBA is everything the Democrats warned it would be.

According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the bill, as written, would provide tax cuts (that benefit primarily the wealthy) of $5.36 trillion. To help pay for these cuts, BUBBA slashes health-care payments by $1.1 trillion and SNAP (or food stamps) benefits by $200 billion. Another $540 billion is saved by phasing out tax credits for clean energy and electric vehicles. BUBBA also increased defense spending by $173 billion (maybe they were anticipating the war in Iran?) and immigration and border spending by $176 billion. The overall effect of BUBBA, as written, is projected to be an increase in the debt of $4.11 trillion. If the Republicans get their way, though, and make the provisions in BUBBA permanent, the overall effect will be an increase in the debt of $5.52 trillion.

In addition to passing BUBBA, the Republicans also refused to extend health insurance subsidies that took effect during the COVID pandemic. Their refusal is expected to cause between 3.6 and 4 million Americans to lose their health insurance. In total, financial hardship is expected to cause over 20 million Americans to lose their health insurance. The increase in uninsured people visiting emergency rooms is simply proof that the Republican attack on health care is succeeding. All this while more and more wealth migrates into the pockets of people who don’t need any more money but can’t seem to get enough. They buy politicians and avoid paying taxes, so our ballooning federal debt just expands faster and faster.

When the Democrats are in power, the Republicans scream and holler about the debt. But when they are in power, they do everything in their power to increase it at a far swifter clip than the Democrats ever manage. The hypocrisy here is too extreme to adequately describe with words. Basically, the Republicans got what they have always wanted: as much money as possible going to the wealthy, and millions of Americans priced out of health insurance.

We. Are. The. Only. Country. On. Earth. That. Does. This! Every other advanced country and most underdeveloped countries provide health care to all of their citizens, and even to noncitizens. And they do it for half of what we pay and get better health results. When my oldest son was serving a mission in Germany, his appendix ruptured, and he spent a couple of weeks in the hospital, half of that time in the ICU after undergoing surgery to remove the appendix and treat the infection that had spread throughout his abdomen. While still recuperating, he was assigned to the mission office after his release from the hospital, and so he got to see the bill that Missionary Medical ended up paying. It was so much less than my outpatient hernia surgery in America that my eyes almost popped out of my head. Yes, he (or the Church) benefited from Germany’s “socialized” medicine, even though he was not a German citizen.

We are also the only country where citizens regularly declare bankruptcy because of medical bills. According to Forbes, “7.4 percent of U.S. residents experience catastrophic healthcare expenses annually. . . . Further, estimates suggest that inability to afford costs of medical care contributes to at least 530,000 personal bankruptcy filings annually.”¹ Why do we put up with such a brutal and uncivilized health-care system? There is only one answer: the Republican Party.

Oh, we have plenty of money to give tax breaks to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and to spend hundreds of billions on an ill-advised war in Iran that Trump’s ego won’t let him pull out of. But we don’t have enough to give food to starving children or basic health care to the working class. What kind of sick society are we? What kind of Christians are the Evangelicals and Mormons who keep voting for this benighted party? And now that the Republicans are learning that their policies are extremely unpopular and are seeing a potential calamity in November, they are resurrecting the old idiotic Communist scare from the 1950s. Joseph McCarthy would be proud.

The damage being done by the Republican Party, not just to our constitutional republic but also to millions of individual lives, will not be easy to undo. Some things may never get fixed. And what do I hear from my Mormon friends and neighbors? Well, most of them are so uninformed they don’t have a clue about what is happening in their own country. So, they keep voting Republican, because, well, abortion and gay marriage, you know, and now they can toss in trans men participating in women’s sports. As a former member of our ward once said in our high priests group, “Well, what other issues are there?” I could have strangled him. But he was my friend and a good, faithful Latter-day Saint who hadn’t bothered to pay attention to the world he lives in.

Now, here’s a sad fact. Guess who else is abysmally uninformed? Donald Trump. He has surrounded himself with people who tell him what he wants to hear and who are afraid to tell him the truth. This ranges from unflattering poll numbers to the actual inventory figures of America’s missiles. He even has a cute little shadow named Natalie Harp (aka the “human printer”) who follows him everywhere he goes and feeds him positive news stories about himself, often carrying a portable printer to provide physical copies on the spot. Trump doesn’t read much else, ignoring briefings and serious news sources. His diet is primarily Truth Social and Fox News. So, we have to wonder what he really understands about the world and the complex circumstances his whimsical decisions affect. He lives in a bubble of his own making that keeps him from seeing the real damage he is causing.

Well, back to where I started. BUBBA is doing exactly what BUBBA was designed to do, and millions of Americans (including many Latter-day Saints) are losing their health insurance and the food they need to be productive citizens, and the Republican politicians are cheering and lying about it all. I just hope that in November, Trump’s incompetence will obstruct his intentions, and we will have a free and fair election. If so, maybe we can start to turn this country around. But I’m not holding my breath. The Constitution is hanging by that proverbial thread, and the Mormons, led by Senator Mike Lee, are rushing forward with scissors.

_____________________

1. Joshua P. Cohen, “Increasing Burdens of Medical Debt and Bankruptcy Are Uniquely American,” Forbes, April 5, 2026, https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2026/04/05/increasing-burdens-of-medical-debt-and-bankruptcy-are-uniquely-american/.