The 2025 tax-and-spending law
Congress cut taxes — mostly for high earners — and paid for part of it by cutting Medicaid and food stamps. The rest went on the national credit card: $3.4 trillion in new debt, and the interest comes out of your taxes.
Forty trillion dollars, taken from your kids, handed to their donors.
Interest on the debt since you opened this page
The U.S. paid $970 billion in net interest in fiscal 2025 — $30,758 every second. It now outspends defense ($917B) and Medicaid ($668B). Treasury via CRFB
Added since January 2017
The debt read $19.9T the day Trump first took office. It reads $40.0T today. Treasury
Your household's share
$40.03T ÷ 132.9M U.S. households. Census Bureau
The book · 2016 → today
What they handed the rich.
What they handed the rich.
What they took from you.
One decade, two columns. Both parties show up wherever the receipts put them. Dollar bars are drawn to scale against the biggest single handout; every amount is an official score or disbursement record.
Handed to the rich
Amber = their gain
Corporate rate cut, 35% → 21% — permanent
The 2017 law cut the tax big corporations pay on profits from 35% to 21% — permanently. Working families got smaller cuts with expiration dates, and the lost revenue became debt you pay interest on.
The paycheck program that missed the paychecks
During COVID, the government handed out $800 billion in forgiven loans to protect paychecks. Two-thirds to three-quarters of it never reached a worker — it went to business owners and shareholders, mostly in the richest fifth.
Contracts for the connected
Washington awards SpaceX and Palantir billions in federal contracts — and in June 2026 the president personally bought stock in both companies. When contracts go to the connected instead of the best bid, you pay more and get less.
The carried-interest loophole survives again
A loophole lets hedge-fund and private-equity managers pay a lower tax rate on their pay than a nurse pays on hers. Presidents of both parties promised to close it. It's still open — and you cover the difference.
Taken from you
Red = your loss
Cut from Medicaid
To help pay for the 2025 tax cuts, Congress cut $840 billion from Medicaid — health coverage for low-income families and nursing-home care. Around 10 million people get pushed off, mostly by new paperwork rules. If that's you or your parents, the coverage is just gone.
Cut from food assistance
The same law cut nearly $300 billion from food stamps — roughly $6 a day per person for the 42 million people who use them. Less at the grocery store for them, to help fund $13,600 a year for the richest tenth.
Stripped of health coverage
Add up the Medicaid rules and the insurance-market changes and 10 million more Americans have no health coverage by 2034 — the government's own count. No insurance doesn't mean no illness. It means the ER, medical debt, and higher premiums for everyone else.
The tariff tax on everything you buy
Tariffs are import taxes, and companies pass them straight into prices. This year they cost the average family about $570 at the register — and because poorer families spend more of what they earn, the hit lands three times harder at the bottom than the top.
The only decile that loses
The government scored the 2025 law group by group. The poorest tenth of households end up about $1,200 a year poorer. Every other group gains, and the gains grow with income. That's not a talking point — it's the official table.
The interest on their borrowing
Washington borrowed to pay for all of it, and the interest comes out of your taxes first — $970 billion last year, more than the Pentagon. About $7,300 per household, every year, and it buys you nothing.
The book opens January 20, 2017 — the day the debt read $19.9T. Dollar bars are scaled to the $3.4T entry; people and percentage bars are labeled.
Nine in ten lose. One in ten wins. One in a thousand wins big.
What do the 2025 tax law and the tariffs do to your family's yearly income, added together? Here's the answer at every income level — Yale Budget Lab's math, built on the government's own numbers.
Poorest tenth−$2,700
2nd tenth−$1,900
3rd−$1,700
4th−$1,400
5th−$1,300
6th−$1,200
7th−$1,000
8th−$800
9th−$300
Richest tenth+$7,900
The top 1% and top 0.1% — their tax cut from the 2025 law alone (Tax Policy Center):
Top 1%≈ +$75,000
Top 0.1% ($5M+)≈ +$300,000
Every bar is drawn to the same scale. Scroll right → the top bars keep going.
Decile bars: Yale Budget Lab, combined effects of the 2025 law and 2025 tariffs, average change in household resources per year, 2026–2034 (August 2025 estimates; tariff rates have shifted since — the shape has not). Top 1% / 0.1% bars: Tax Policy Center, average 2026 tax change from the law alone — a different measure, marked with hatching. And none of this counts your share of the interest — print your own statement below.
When the bill comes due, watch who pays it.
Interest is already crowding out the budget — something has to give. The record shows exactly what gets protected when it does, and who gets handed the "hard choices."
Always protected
They won't cut the carried-interest loophole. They'll cut your Social Security, your Medicare, your kid's school — and call it "hard choices." The hard choice is theirs: they chose you.
Follow the forty trillion. They got the money — you got the bill. That's not borrowing. That's a heist with paperwork.