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The simple math of the big bill

By Sally Helm,

Kenny Malone, Mary Childs, Jess Jiang, Alex Goldmark, Sam Yellowhorse Kesler

Published July 6, 2025 at 7:23 AM PDT

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) (C) signs the One Big Beautiful Bill Act during an enrollment ceremony with fellow Republicans in the Rayburn Room at the U.S. Capitol on July 03, 2025 in Washington, DC.

If we think about the economic effects of President Donald Trumps big taxing and spending and domestic policy bill, we can roughly sum it up in one line. It goes something like this: We will make many big tax cuts permanent and pay for those tax cuts by cutting Medicaid and a few other things and also...by borrowing money. A lot of money.

Even more than we've already been borrowing over the past twenty years. (And that was already a lot, too!)

Today: simple arithmetic with profound ramifications. Tax cuts, spending cuts, and whether they balance out. (Spoiler: no.)

We look under the hood to see how all this is calculated. And we ask: how will a bigger deficit play out for all of us, in our normal, regular lives?

We've covered a bunch more having to do with the big taxing and spending bill and the federal debt recently on Planet Money and our short daily show The Indicator:

This episode was hosted by Sally Helm, Kenny Malone and Mary Childs. It was produced by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler with help from Cooper Katz McKim. It was edited by Jess Jiang and our executive producer Alex Goldmark. It was engineered by Cena Loffredo and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez.

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Music: Universal Production Music - "Shoot Me Down," "Matador Enters," "Time to Spare," and "Wildwoods"
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Sally Helm

Sally Helm reports and produces for Planet Money. She has covered wildfire investigation in California, Islamic Finance in Michigan, the mystery of declining productivity growth, and holograms. Helm is a graduate of the Transom Story Workshop and of Yale University. Before coming to work at NPR, she helped start an after-school creative writing program in Sitka, Alaska. She is originally from Los Angeles, California.

Kenny Malone

Kenny Malone is a correspondent for NPR's Planet Moneypodcast. Before that, he was a reporter for WNYC's Only Humanpodcast. Before that, he was a reporter for Miami's WLRN. And before that, he was a reporter for his friend T.C.'s homemade newspaper, Neighborhood News.

Mary Childs

Mary Childs is a co-host and correspondent for NPR's Planet Money podcast. Before joining the team in 2019, she was a senior reporter at Barron's magazine, where she covered the alternatives industry, the bond market and capitalism. Before that, she worked at the Financial Times and Bloomberg News. She's written about the pioneering of new asset classes like time, billionaire's proposals to solve inequality and diversity and discrimination in the finance industry. Before all that, she was also a Watson Fellow, spending a year traveling the world painting portraits. She graduated from Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, with a degree in business journalism and an honors thesis comparing the use and significance of media sting operations in the U.S. and India.

Jess Jiang

Jess Jiang is the producer for NPR's international podcast, Rough Translation. Previously, Jess was a producer for Planet Money. In 2014, she won an Emmy for the team's T-shirt project. She followed the start of the t-shirt's journey, from cotton farms in Mississippi to factories in Indonesia. But her biggest prize has been getting to drive a forklift, back hoe, and a 35-ton digger for a story. Jess got her start in public radio at Studio 360—though, if you search hard enough, you can uncover a podcast she made back in college.

Alex Goldmark

Alex Goldmark is the senior supervising producer of Planet Money and The Indicator from Planet Money.His reporting has appeared on shows including Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Radiolab, On The Media, APM's Marketplace, and in magazines such as GOOD and Fast Company. Previously, he was a senior producer at WNYC–New York Public Radio where he piloted new programming and helped grow young shows to the point where they now have their own coffee mug pledge gifts. Long ago, he was the executive producer of two shows at Air America Radio, a very short term consultant for the World Bank, a volunteer trying to fight gun violence in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, and also a poor excuse for a bartender in Washington, DC. He lives next to the Brooklyn Bridge and owns an orange velvet couch.

Sam Yellowhorse Kesler

Sam Yellowhorse Kesler is an Assistant Producer for Planet Money. Previously, he's held positions at NPR's Ask Me Another & All Things Considered, and was the inaugural Code Switch Fellow. Before NPR, he interned with World Cafe from WXPN. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, and continues to reside in Philadelphia. If you want to reach him, try looking in your phone contacts to see if he's there! You'd be surprised how many people are in there that you forgot about.