Senate Republicans are trying to push through a giant Trump-backed bill using what critics call a phony accounting trick—and Democrats are furious.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D‑Ore.), the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, didn’t mince words on Sunday night: “The only way for Republicans to pass this horribly destructive bill, which is based on budget math as fake as Donald Trump’s tan, was to go nuclear and hide it behind a bunch of procedural jargon,” he said.
The bill, called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” is packed with expensive extensions of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. But instead of admitting it would blow a hole in the budget, Republicans are using a sketchy accounting method called “current policy.” It assumes the tax cuts will be extended no matter what—making it look like the bill doesn’t add to the deficit.
That’s not how the Congressional Budget Office sees it. According to their numbers, using the standard “current law” baseline, the bill does increase the deficit—by a lot.
Wyden says Republicans rigged the system to get their way. “We’re now operating in a world where the filibuster applies to Democrats but not to Republicans, and that’s simply unsustainable given the triage that’ll be required whenever the Trump era finally ends,” he warned.
Republicans argue Democrats have used this method before. But Democrats say that was for smaller, bipartisan bills—not a nearly 1,000-page law packed with trillions in tax breaks.
Still, Republicans are moving fast. The Senate is holding a rapid-fire series of votes Monday, called a “vote-a-rama,” to jam the bill through before the White House’s end-of-week deadline. The push comes after Vice President Vance and other Trump officials pressured senators to get debate started.
With a razor-thin margin, GOP leaders struck a late-night deal Saturday to win over holdouts, including Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.).
Now, the Senate is charging ahead with a bill built on math that critics say is as fake as Trump’s glow—and just as hard to ignore.
