In fact, not only are we going further into debt for no good reason, but we’re going further into debt for a bad one — actually, two very bad ones.

The same fiscal hawks that yelled histrionically about refusing to take on debt — even in times of crisis — let the GOP budget bill for FY2026 sail through without a peep despite it adding a debt burden of almost $4 trillion over the next 10 years.

And for what? The first terrible reason is so that a gaggle of wealthy donors can get even wealthier, have more lavish weddings, build ever more elaborate doomsday bunkers, recreate company towns from The Jungle, cavalierly flit off to space, and so on. Never could I have imagined Gilded Age 2.0 would be so dumb.

After screaming bloody murder for literal decades and lecturing Democrats about reckless spending and balanced budgets, the Republicans simply let this gigantic albatross sail right through without so much as a debate. It’s as if the national debt were suddenly the Epstein files — something you should weirdly be ashamed of still caring about after being whipped into a frenzy about it for years (including being cajoled to the Capitol to break the law on behalf of someone who is above the law).

“Reckless spending” is fine when my team does it, seems to be GOP orthodoxy. Future generations be damned — we only think about them under Democratic Presidents. Suddenly, it has become desirable to saddle the nation with more debt for no good reason.

Establishment of a police state

The second terrible rationale for taking the US further into debt is to create a police state in America, with literal concentration camps. Despite campaigning on deporting the alleged set of violent criminals within the undocumented immigrant demographic, Trump and his slavering goon squad have been picking up fathers, landscapers, students who posted things they don’t like on social media, random South Koreans, and anyone Tom Homan thinks looks a little bit too brown. In other words, the government is spending billions and billions of your tax dollars to get rid of hardworking taxpayers — a hateful Dunning-Kruger approach that is toxic both politically and economically.

This GOP tax and spending bill will also empower the federal government to take over Democratic cities — despite the fact that red states have more crime. And to deploy America’s federal law enforcement staff away from national and international crimes like sex trafficking and fraud, and turning them towards’ providing photo ops in DC. Because appearances are all that matter to this particular president and his regime.

All this to create the kind of police state with standing army that the Founders would have laughed out of the room — because they had just fought a bloody war to defeat that kind of autocratic nonsense. With its cash infusion of an eye-popping $171 billion across federal agencies and other new border security and detention facility funding, ICE is poised to become the 4th largest branch of the military — but deployed on home soil, increasingly against Americans.

The GOP Budget Bill in 7 Minutes

Ask the Bill: An HR1 NotebookLM

But you don’t have to take my word for it — here you can talk directly to the bill in natural language, in NotebookLM:

GOP budget bill winners

See a full table of the winners and the new lay of the land and the immense growth of the administrative state that the GOP claims it is trying to eradicate:

Rank	Entity (+ key components where relevant)	Total FY 26 $B	Key sources
1	U.S. Air Force	301.1	DoD FY-26 budget briefing (Defense.gov)
2	U.S. Navy	292.2	(Defense.gov)
3	U.S. Army	197.4	(Defense.gov)
4	Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) • Baseline request … 11.29 (DHS CJ) (Snopes) • H.R. 1 enforcement add-ons … 29.9 (Congress) (American Immigration Council) • H.R. 1 migrant-detention facilities … 45.0 (WaPo) (The Washington Post)	86.2	DHS CJ; American Immigration Council; Washington Post
5	Customs & Border Protection (CBP) • Baseline request … 23.0 (DHS CJ) (DHS) • H.R. 1 border-wall system … 46.5 (WaPo) (The Washington Post)	69.5	DHS CJ; Washington Post
6	U.S. Space Force	40.0	Defense press briefing (Defense.gov)
7	Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)	36.2	SphereState budget analysis (spherestate.com)
8	Military Intelligence Program (MIP) (classified top-line)	33.6	Inside Defense (Inside Defense)
9	U.S. Coast Guard	14.5	FY-26 Coast Guard CJ (Defense Media)
10	Transportation Security Administration (TSA)	11.6	FY-26 TSA CJ (DHS)
11	Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)	10.1	FBI FY-26 request testimony (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
12	DHS Management Directorate (HQ & shared services)	4.0	FY-26 MGMT CJ (DHS)
13	U.S. Secret Service (USSS)	3.55	USSS FY-26 CJ (DHS)
14	Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)	2.5	Reuters budget scoop (Reuters)
15	Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)	2.38	WSJ reporting (The Wall Street Journal)

Throwing people off Medicaid will make insurance prices go up for everyone. This is how insurance works. At some point, MAGA will be hit by it… and confronted with the conflicting messaging that it’s somehow still Biden’s fault, or the Deep State which Trump can never seem to be on top of, AND that Donald Trump is all-powerful and the master of the universe and can do anything at any time yadda yadda. Except identify where the Deep State is and stop them.