USA Role as a Financial Safe Haven Is Over-What the Trump Budget Busting Bill Really Means

 

The Trump Republicans, who won the Senate and Congressional majorities in November just passed the largest deficit for the federal budget at three trillion, dwarfing anything the Democrats did. (Katie Edmondson, 2025)This article focuses on the long-term financial ramifications for the country and especially for our children and grandchildren. The Senate bill actually went further than the House bill to throw millions more under the bus for healthcare, access to food, and other basic needs, creating a mutually compounding effect of cruelty. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the savings from throwing nearly 12 million people off Medicaid plans to be worth a trillion dollars. (Sanger-Katz, 2025)

The actions of the Trump Congress will cause 11.8 million low-income and working-class people to lose their medical insurance through the insurance exchanges and Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. This is approximately a third of all the enrollees. For most of these people, the insurance exchanges are the only way they can obtain medical insurance. Without medical insurance, many of these people will cease to receive care, regardless of their health. The United States does provide hospital treatment for people in urgent need, which is dependent on the location one lives, and how well resourced their healthcare safety nets are maintained.

Even if throwing nearly 12 million people under the bus does not bother you, the strain on the national economy should and here is your basic lesson in economics. The United States is a debtor nation, which means it needs investors from other nations to buy our bonds, which are a debt instrument, to keep US currency strong and to pay the interest on our national debt. The national currency has lost over 10% of its value since January, an unprecedented slide which continues. In the past, the purchase of American bonds from foreign nationals has been considered a safe investment in a world of risk. The Trump Administration has destroyed that impression through his inefficient and historic levels of tariffs and other aggressive actions which undermine financial security for all of us. The Trump Administration has stepped back from a position of global leadership, with gargantuan cuts to USAID, a program championed by Republican and Democratic presidents, as well as the Foreign Service, and other programs which reflected well on the United States. This vacuum has been filled by China, in Asia and now, because of the Trump Administration’s closing of US Embassies in Africa as well. In financial terms, the US can expect to pay higher interest rates to bondholders because of the perceived increased risk in the national currency. This will have a compounding effect of increased budget constraints, which will require higher taxes or program cuts. Many Republicans would love to cut Medicare and Social Security and the Social Security funding is only adequate until 2035. These programs are essentially the only safety net for working class people in America. It appears that Trump has assured the current generation of “robber barons” tax breaks into perpetuity while the other 90% will be groveling for scraps, left to serve the needs of the uber wealthy.

And this is the healthpolicymaven signing off encouraging you not to sign blanket releases for healthcare facilities, do specify which lifesaving procedures for which you consent and those which you decline.

Roberta Winter is a freelance journalist who received no money for this post. This healthcare and public policy blog has been in continuous publication since the fourth quarter of 2007, for those of you who still read.

 References

Katie Edmondson, K. H. (2025, July 1). Trump Administration Live Updates: Senate Passes Trump’s Signature Policy Bill. The New York Times. Retrieved July 1, 2025, from https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/07/01/us/trump-bill-news

Sanger-Katz, M. (2025, June 29). G.O.P. Bill Has $1.1 Trillion in Health Cuts and 11.8 Million Losing Care, C.B.O. Says. The New York Times. Retrieved July 1, 2025, from https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/29/us/politics/trump-policy-bill-health-insurance-cuts.html