Even before House Republicans learned the full price of their tax package on Wednesday, one of the bill’s chief authors, Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, was sowing doubt about the accuracy of the estimate.
“I’m skeptical,” Mr. Smith quipped at an event last month when asked about the coming analysis of the legislation’s cost. “Unless I like the number, I’m against the number.”
In the bitter war over the nation’s fiscal future, President Trump and his Republican allies have united around a new foe: the economists and budget experts who have warned about the costs of the party’s tax ambitions. Republican leaders have set about trying to discredit any hint of unfavorable accounting on their signature legislation as they race to enact it before the president’s self-imposed July 4 deadline.
The latest estimate arrived on Wednesday, projecting that the sprawling bill endorsed by Mr. Trump could add about $2.4 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade.
By then, though, the package of tax, spending and welfare cuts had already ignited an intense wave of political attacks and recriminations. While Republicans scrambled to cast their proposal as fiscally responsible, Wall Street was getting the jitters about the nation’s growing debt burden. The tech executive Elon Musk, having left behind his role seeking to slash government spending for Mr. Trump, savaged the bill on social media on Tuesday, saying it would “massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit.”
Most economists — from nonpartisan government watchdogs as well as outside tax analysts across the political spectrum — have concluded that the bill passed by House Republicans, which is now being considered by the Senate, could exacerbate the nation’s fiscal imbalance while contributing less in economic growth than Mr. Trump forecasts.