The Congressional Budget Office projects the federal budget deficit will reach $1.9 trillion in fiscal year 2026, equal to 5.8 percent of GDP. [1] The OBBBA adds $4.7 trillion to cumulative deficits over the 2026-2035 window when debt service is included, with over 80 percent of the revenue reduction attributable to the OBBBA's extension of tax provisions that were scheduled to expire in December 2025. [1]

Neither number is surprising. The OBBBA deliberately sequenced its provisions to front-load benefits and back-load costs. Corporate and individual tax cuts took effect in July 2025. Medicaid work requirements, SNAP eligibility restrictions, and ACA marketplace subsidy changes phase in across 2026, 2027, and 2028. The $1.9 trillion deficit reflects the period in which one side of the ledger is fully in force and the other is not.

The spending-reduction provisions that partially offset the tax cuts begin in earnest in late 2026 and peak in 2027 and 2028. The political design is legible: benefits arrive before an election, costs arrive after. [1] The OBBBA also set a new statutory debt ceiling of $41.1 trillion. CBO projects that ceiling will be reached in 2027. [2] That makes the next debt-ceiling confrontation a 2026 midterm-year event — a Congress that just faced voters will be asked to raise the limit that the law it passed made inevitable. The sequencing was not an accident; it is the architecture.

-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco