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and analysis of the writer:

Immediately after his election in 2017, President Trump convinced his MAGA majorities in Congress to pass a tax cut bonanza for the wealthy and corporate America. The cut ducked the debt ceiling by employing accounting tricks and establishing an expiration date of 2025.

Trump鈥檚 theory was to leave that problem to some future President: He didn鈥檛 know that person would be him. Reelected, Trump had a nightmare on his hands. The bill for his massive tax cut had come due. His choices were to restore the old rates or find trillions of dollars to pay for the tax cut鈥檚 permanent extension. He chose the latter and called it the Big Beautiful Bill.

Attempts to justify bad policy usually father even worse outcomes. The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq turned out to be a snipe hunt that bogged America down in the Middle East for decades. The infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 was aimed at protecting American farmers and businesses from foreign competition during the early years of the Great Depression. Instead, it brought retaliation which further reduced economic activity by decreasing both imports and exports, lengthening the economic pain. To quote Mo Udall, 鈥淓very problem has a solution 鈥� simple, neat, and wrong!鈥�

Trump鈥檚 Big Beautiful Bill is a mistake of grotesque design. Its only clear themes are hate and revenge, which he expresses by voiding every progressive investment in the future made by previous Presidents. Nearing 80, with dreams of historical acclaim, he thunders through the peaceful and mostly prosperous society he inherited with a wrecking ball. Not even the highly successful clean energy programs in the red states can escape his wrath. In the words of a gangster, he 鈥渆nds鈥� them and the thousands of jobs they underwrite. Instead of investing in battery technology, which soon will power most consumer products and military weapons, he throws huge subsidies at coal. It鈥檚 the equivalent of relying on a better horse and buggy. I grew up in a city in the era of coal and nearly choked on black dust in the winter air. He takes his WWE performance to Iowa and announces that next year, America鈥檚 250th birthday, he will stage America鈥檚 Great State Fair. Let鈥檚 see if the Music Man can sell his wares after a year of farm tariffs, hospital closings, and broken schools.

Deficit reduction is a hard political issue to sell. Ross Perot tried, as did the Tea Party Movement; neither registered with the voters. This time may be different. Congressional Republicans have rewritten laws and scurried around budget rules to produce a program that would raise the deficit from $3 to $5 trillion, enough to put the nation鈥檚 debt on a level equal to America鈥檚 annual output. This spending spree, much of it regressive, has for the first time since World War II caused the stability of the dollar and its role as the world鈥檚 safest currency to be questioned.

Our largest investor, Japan, has recently hinted that it might sell its U.S. bonds while Moody鈥檚 downgraded our sovereign debt, virtually ensuring that consumers will pay higher prices for everything from mortgages to food and gas.

President Trump is, if nothing else, an escape artist. To free himself from the fiscal trap he created with the 2017 tax cut, he first tried to avoid deficit spending by siccing his former friend Elon Musk on the Civil Service, where he pledged to scour the system of $1 trillion in waste, fraud, and abuse. It didn鈥檛 exist. Nonetheless, he allowed Musk and his teenagers to fire thousands of valuable employees without cause.

He then turned to the entitlement programs 鈥� Medicaid, food distribution, energy assistance for the poor 鈥� where the real money is. The net is that millions of people in rural areas and on the edge of survival will lose the benefits candidate Trump promised to protect.

Still, that was not nearly enough to dent the cost of the tax cuts. So his acolytes on the Hill came up with a new form of accounting that posited that current spending cannot be counted as new spending even if you don鈥檛 have the money for it. In simple terms, I have an allowance of $20 a week that is cut off, but I can still spend the $20 even though I don鈥檛 have it. Fiscal madness.

In an effort to escape his trap, Donald Trump and his lemmings in Congress haven鈥檛 made America great again. They have set our society back decades.