When asked, Americans express plenty of financial regret, such as making big, impulsive purchases and spending too much to keep up with higher earners.
According to a new Clarify Capitol survey of more than 1,000 Americans (including boomers, Gen Xers, millennials, and Gen Zers), they also have deep regret over not investing earlier.
Forty-three percent pointed to that oversight as their biggest financial failure. Following closely behind, 38% said they regret overspending, which ended up costing them about $63,000 in net worth. One in three said they overspent simply to “keep up with the Joneses.”
However, it’s not just irresponsible spending that haunts Americans. They have regret about the financial choices they made on the job, too. Ten percent said that not negotiating a higher salary was their biggest financial regret. According to the report, the failure to negotiate with an employer ends up costing an estimated $78,000 of income.
Likewise, working Americans also said they regretted quitting their job without a backup plan. One in 10 said they wished they had figured out their next move before giving their notice.
According to a 2024 Pew Research Center study, one of the biggest reasons for dissatisfaction among workers is how much they’re (not) being paid. Eighty percent said their pay has not kept up with increases in the cost of living, and 71% said their pay was too low for the quality of work they produce. Seventy percent said their pay is too low for the amount of work they do.
Given how unhappy so many workers are with their pay, leaving a job can be the right moveas long as you have new employment lined up. Just make sure you negotiate your salary to avoid feeling regret down the line.
It’s official: Mozilla has announced that its extremely handy read-it-later app Pocket will be shutting down on July 8, 2025, with user data exports available until October 8, 2025.
If this leaves you looking for a new home for your saved articles, videos, and web pages, the good news is youve still got plenty of excellent options.
Here are five solid alternatives to Pocket that offer a variety of features and pricing structures to suit your needs.
Matter
Matter is a premium read-it-later solution that goes beyond simply saving articles. For one thing, it also lets you read email newsletters in an environment thats superior to dealing with them in your inbox. Available in iOS and web versions, it also offers powerful highlighting and annotation tools that allow you to capture your thoughts directly on the text.
The anpp integrates with popular third-party services and curates a daily digest of interesting articles from your saved sources, adding a discovery element.
Theres a free version available with an uncapped read-later library, mobile and web extensions, and sharing features. Matter Premium starts at $8 a month and includes text-to-speech, newsletter sync, unlimited highlighting and note-taking, Kindle export, and other goodies.
Readwise Reader
If you’re already familiar with Readwise for its highlight export features, then Readwise Reader is a natural extension.
It boasts a clean interface, strong highlighting and note-taking capabilities, text-to-speech, AI features, and the ability to import various content types (web articles, PDFs, newsletters, YouTube transcripts, and more).
Readwise Reader is included with a Readwise subscription, which offers a free 30-day trial and then runs $10 per month.
Raindrop
If you’re a highly visual person or deal with a wide variety of content formats, this ones for you. While many read-it-later apps focus primarily on text, Raindrop shines as a universal bookmark manager that’s both visually appealing and versatile.
You can save articles, images, videos, PDFs, and even entire collections of links while leveraging organization features like tags, nested collections, and a powerful search engine.
Raindrop offers a pretty generous free plan with unlimited bookmarks, collections, and devices. The Pro plan runs $28 per year and adds AI suggestions for organization, full-text search, a permanent library (copies of saved pages), more upload space, cloud backup, and other enhancements.
Recall
Recall allows you to save and process various types of content, including articles, PDFs, YouTube videos, podcasts, and even meeting recordings.
It then uses AI to summarize the interesting bits from your saved content. You can ask it questions about the content, create notes, and organize it all in one central place.
Recall offers a free plan which includes 10 free content summaries, unlimited read-it-later storage, and unlimited personal notes. The “Plus” plan starts at $10 per month and offers unlimited content summaries, automatic categorization, unlimited AI questions, and more.
Instapaper
For those of us of a certain well, vintage, Instapaper is something of a household name.
A pioneer in the read-it-later space thats now almost old enough to vote, it saves and presents articles in a clean, minimalist format that’s ideal for focused reading.
Its straightforward to use as well, offering offline reading capabilities, adjustable fonts, and simple highlighting. If your primary goal is distraction-free reading of saved articles,Instapaper is worth a look.
Instapaper offers a free version with unlimited article saving, syncing, folders, and integration with third-party apps. Instapaper Premium starts at $6 per month and includes full-text search, a permanent archive of articles, unlimited notes, text-to-speech, speed reading, and an ad-free website.
Last year, Donald Trump took the stage of the Las Vegas Bitcoin Conference to worship at the altar of cryptocurrency. He said he would fire Gary Gensler, the former chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission who led a yearslong crackdown on crypto fraud. The audience roared. He ended on a rousing note: We will make America and Bitcoin bigger, better, stronger, richer, freer, and greater than ever before.
Some crypto activists were perturbed. Sure, Trump rallied behind Bitcoin as a source of industrial growth, but why wouldnt he commit to outright replacing banking with digital currencies? Trump failed to comment on the traditional banks, which crypto advocates thought were discriminating against them by shutting down their accounts, or fiat currency, which some crypto boosters hope to replace entirely.
One year later, President Trump skipped out on the Bitcoin Conference, but he sent his envoys. The administrations crypto message has become even more muddled. While Vice President JD Vance emphasized that stablecoins regulated by the administration’s new crypto proposal (the GENIUS Act) dont threaten the integrity of the U.S. dollar, Eric Trump said that hed like to see some major banks go extinct. It seems no one will decide whether crypto is a strength toor a replacement forthe U.S. financial system.
Mixed signals at the 2025 Bitcoin Conference
Vice President Vance headlined the conference, where he struck a similar tone to Trumps 2024 speech. He emphasized that Bitcoin is part of the mainstream economy, calling it a digital assetbut not a currency.
Vance also promoted the GENIUS Act, which would set regulations for currency or commodity-backed stablecoins (crypto currencies pegged to fiat currency or other reference asset) so they could flow more freely. The bill has already passed through the Senate, and is waiting for a House vote. Vance promised that these coins wouldn’t threaten the dollar. Dollar-pegged stablecoins, particularly once GENIUS is enacted, are only going to help the American economy and [are] only going to help the American dollar, he claimed.
Central to Trumps crypto strategy was the establishment of a Bitcoin reserve, allowing the government to collect and hold cryptocurrency from criminal or civil asset seizures. But whether this stockpile operates alongside, or in competition with dollar spending remains blurry.
Bo Hines, the executive director of Trumps digital assets advisory, spoke of Bitcoin as something the government could grow endlessly. We want as much of it as we can possibly get, he said at the conference. Were not going to sell any Bitcoin that we have in the U.S. government, period.
On the other hand, Trumps crypto czar David Sacks was more measured in his words. He said that he cant promise anything, but that he hoped the government would be able to buy more Bitcoin. If either the Commerce Department or the Treasury Department can figure out how to fund it without adding to the debt, then they are allowed to create those programs, he claimed. Maybe find the money from some other program thats not using it.
While they struck different tones, Vance, Hines, and Sacks all spoke of Bitcoin as an asset class. Whether it could constitute a new financial systemthe currencys original missionwas outside the question. But Eric Trumpwhile not an administration official, is certainly influential on Trump policyclaimed that crypto could replace banking entirely: It makes everything cheaper, it makes it faster, it makes it safer, it makes it more transparent. He said that hed love to see some of the big banks go extinct.
What does the Trump administration really think about Bitcoin?
Trump has backed crypto expansion forcefully, but his rationale remains slippery. At the recent Blockworks Digital Asset Summit, Trump told the audience that they will unleash an explosion of international growth, but didnt explain how, other than a brief reference to stablecoins supporting the dollar. It is exciting to watch as you invent the future of finance, Trump said, while not venturing to explain whether that future included traditional banks.
Why is Trump so into crypto? Much of it is likely for personal gain. Trump has raked in millions on his memecoins and NFTs, sending cash directly to his wallet. Crypto advocates also helped Trump reach the White House in the first place. Their lobby has political heft: According to a New Yorker report, they tanked Katie Porter’s California Senate bid after she expressed mere glimmers of anti-crypto rhetoric.
But theres a political tension underlying Trumps crypto push. If he says that crypto will replace bankingor even fiat currencytraditional financiers could riot. But, if he claims that Bitcoin is merely an asset class and not the future of finance, he could anger the crypto community.
For now, Trump and his administration will try to sit on both sides of the fence.
We have officially arrived in the era where e-commerce brands that prioritize smart, value-aligned engagement over mass media spend are owning the here and nowas well as the future. With traditional advertising under pressure to deliver a more definitive ROI, looming tariffs driving up the cost of everything, and consumer confidence lower than its been since peak pandemic, we all need to make every dollar count. In addition, the CFO is more interested in marketing ROI than ever, and wants to see measurable results.
The old playbook of more ads, more impressions, and more clicks has never really worked. In our exciting new reality, smart marketers do (a lot!) more with less and will more easily navigate the bumpy road ahead.
Customer data is your gold mine
Do you remember the years we were all obsessed with big data (perhaps I’m showing my age). Now we have so much more data, but still, so many are unsure of how to unlock it in ways that delight customers and bring in meaningful new revenue. In comes AI, hurray! Knowing that its easierand less expensiveto keep existing consumers than to acquire new ones, leveraging that powerful first-party data is one strategy that will drive better results. Understanding which offers, products, and content your existing customers respond to, and how to present them in the most compelling and enticing way, lays a data-rich foundation for deeper engagement and sustainable growth.
There is so much value hidden in e-commerce-owned channels. Checkout is unique because attention is highest and intent is clearest. Checkout is a perfect opportunity for brands to present relevant upsells and offers powered by first-party data. Its also a great time to drive incremental revenue by presenting strategic partner messages/products and loyalty nudges. Checkout interactions are the perfect environment for bringing in new revenue, increasing customer lifetime value, and capturing real attention and engagement.
The next growth wave wont come from bigger budgets
Too many ads create a noisy and less enjoyable checkout experience. Millennial and Gen Z consumers are more likely to reward brands that respect their time, attention, and preferences. Key digital moments like checkout, order tracking, and order thank yous are perfect opportunities for e-commerce merchants to present value-aligned, relevant offers that reinforce trust and drive repeat engagement.
The next wave of growth wont be driven by spending more. The smartest marketers will extract more value from what already exists. Focusing on intelligent monetization and intentional engagement will allow e-commerce retailers to emerge from this challenge stronger and closer to their customers. Treating data as more than a record and checkout as more than a singular transaction will allow e-commerce retailers to unlock new revenue streams at zero additional cost.
Elizabeth Buchanan is chief commercial officer of Rokt.
The year 2024 was a good one for the people who ran some of the country’s biggest companies. CEO pay set another record last year, according to a new study in The Wall Street Journal, with half of the chief executives who made the paper’s list of the highest paid CEOs making $17.1 million or more, up more than 8% from $15.8 million the year prior.
Rick Smith, co-founder of Axon Enterprise, the maker of Taser stun guns, topped the list with a pay package of $165 million (entirely in company stock). Elon Musk earned the least, once again taking home $0 in salary from Tesla. (His compensation is instead structured around stock options that vest based on the company’s performance.)
The widening pay gap between CEOs and their employees is a growing concern. For comparison, the average annual salary for all U.S. workers in 2024 was $66,622, just shy of 2% higher than the $65,470 average in 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In terms of raw numbers, GE’s Lawrence Culp Jr. was second on the list, earning $88.95 million. Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman came in third at $84.03 million, Apple’s Tim Cook was fourth at $74.61 million. And KKR’s Joseph Bae rounded out the top five at $73.09 million.
While the average pay package for the top half of the CEOs on the list jumped 8%, several of the 417 executives the Journal examined saw significantly higher increases. All totaled, 18 CEOs saw their total pay increase by more than 100% last year.
Axon’s Smith, for example, saw a 999% increase in total pay from the year prior. Corpay’s Ronald Clarke took home $28.05 million, which only earned him the rank of 54th overall, but was 951% better than he did in 2023. And Workday’s Carl Eschenback saw a 938% bump, taking him to $26.17 million. Rounding out the top five, James Vena of Union Pacific had a 775% salary increase to $17.64 million, and GE’s Lawrence Culp saw a 505% pay increase to $88.95 million.
Smith saw a similar big jump in 2019, when his salary soared to $246 million on a stock reward. The 2024 increase is reportedly because of a new program for Axon workers that lets them convert some or all of their salary into restricted shares, which could grow or shrink depending on the company’s performance.
Although many executives saw pay bumps, only one had a pay package worth $100 million or more. In 2020, 17 CEOs in S&P 500 companies made nine figures. Last year, Smith was the only one. And even including execs outside of the S&P, the total was the lowest since 2016, the Journal reported.
The moderators behind a pro-artificial intelligence subreddit say they have been banning users who appear to be experiencing chatbot-fueled delusions.
“LLMs today are ego-reinforcing glazing-machines that reinforce unstable and narcissistic personalities to convince them that they’ve made some sort of incredible discovery or created a god or become a god,” wrote a moderator of r/accelerate. “AI is rizzing them up in a very unhealthy way at the moment.”
The policy announcement on the Reddit page coincides with the emergence of anecdotal accounts from users who claim someone they know is suffering from an AI-fueled break from reality.
These users often describe someone close to them who began using a chatbot casually but then got drawn into a kind of rabbit hole of delusions, since chatbots rarely challenge users’ beliefs.
To be clear, the evidence is anecdotal. There is no direct proof that AI can cause psychosis, but users are raising serious and growing concerns.
One Reddit user in the ChatGPT subreddit posted a month ago about how to cope with what they believe is their partner’s “Chatgpt induced psychosis.” “He says with conviction that he is a superior human now and is growing at an insanely rapid pace,” the user wrote.
The post attracted a flood of comments from people claiming they are in similar situations or offering advice on dealing with psychosis. Other posts have appeared across Reddit asking for help with delusional behavior.
In May, Rolling Stone published a detailed article about people losing loved ones to AI-driven spiritual fantasies. Reporter Miles Klee interviewed one person who said their partner began to see ChatGPT as a companion and eventually believed that the bot was God or that he himself was God.
Now some moderators are taking a stand against people posting this type of content, aiming to protect their online communities. The r/accelerate moderators post stated they have already banned around 100 users from the subreddit and have noticed an increase in such posts this month.
“The sad truth is that this subreddit would probably be filled with their posts if we didn’t do that,” the moderator said.
ChatGPT maker OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to Fast Company‘s request for comment.
The U.S. Department of Energy has ordered another power plant, this time an oil and gas plant in Pennsylvania, to keep its turbines running through the hottest summer months as a precaution against electricity shortfalls in the 13-state mid-Atlantic grid.
The department’s order to the grid operator, PJM Interconnection, regarding the Eddystone power plant just south of Philadelphia on the Delaware River, is the department’s second use of federal power under President Donald Trump to require a power plant to keep operating on the mainland United States.
Constellation Energy had planned to shut down Eddystone’s units 3 and 4 on Saturday, but Trump’s Department of Energy ordered the company to continue operating the units until at least Aug. 28. The units can produce a combined 760 megawatts.
The department, in its order, cited PJM’s growing concerns about power shortfalls amid the shutdown of aging power plants and rising electricity demand.
PJM last year approved Constellation’s request to shut down the units, but it welcomed the department’s order to keep them operating, saying it’s a prudent, term-limited step that allows PJM, the department, and Constellation to study the longer-term need and viability of Eddystone’s units.
The department took a similar step last week, ordering Consumers Energy to keep the J.H. Campbell coal-fired power plant open in Michigan past its Saturday retirement.
The grid operator there, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, said the order was unnecessary, that there was no energy emergency there, and that there should be enough energy in the region through the summer.
An environmental advocacy group, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, criticized the move to keep Eddystone operating as an “environmental injustice.” Shutting down the units would reduce hazardous pollution and carbon emissions from the decades-old facility and help the region meet federal clean air standards for smog, it said.
A construction project on one of Newark Liberty International Airport‘s three main runways wrapped up nearly two weeks early, so the Federal Aviation Administration expects to be able to ease flight limits next week despite the ongoing shortage of air traffic controllers.
Federal Transportation Department officials said Monday that some of the runway equipment must be tested before the FAA can increase the flight limits at the second busiest airport in the New York City area. The runway began to be used for departures Monday but won’t be available for arrivals until after that testing is completed early next week. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said that if all goes well, the runway should be certified by June 10.
Crews worked day and night to complete the $121 million construction project 13 days ahead of schedule and ease some of the problems at the airport. But Newark has also been plagued by cancellations and delays this spring because of a shortage of air traffic controllers after the FAA had technical problems that twice briefly knocked out the radar and communications at a facility in Philadelphia that directs planes in and out of the airport.
Five air traffic controllers went on 45-day trauma leaves after the first radar and communications outage at the Philadelphia facility on April 28, and another one is out on medical leave. That left the facility with only 16 certified controllers and five supervisors. Officials have said there are another 16 experienced controllers in training who should get certified sometime between now and October.
The FAA limited the Newark airport to 28 arrivals and 28 departures an hour last month because of the construction and staff shortages. The agency has said that it expects to be able to bump up the number of flights daily in Newark to 34 arrivals and 34 departures once the runway construction is done.
The controllers on trauma leave are scheduled to return around the middle of the month. But Duffy said the FAA has enough controllers now to handle the higher limit of 34 arrivals and departures per hour.
Before the air traffic control problems this spring, 38 or 39 flights typically took off and landed hourly at the Newark airport.
The FAA has said it will revisit the limits again in October because it hopes to have more controllers trained by then.
The government also upgraded the software at the air traffic control facility after a second radar outage on May 9. That helped prevent a repeat problem on May 11 when there was another problem with the lines carrying the radar signal down from New York.
Verizon has installed a new fiber optic line between Philadelphia and New York after the problems but that isn’t expected to go into service until July after testing is completed.
Josh Funk, Associated Press
The fifth and final season of Netflixs Stranger Things is dropping on Netflix just in time for Thanksgiving. And Christmas. And also New Years Eve.
The industry-leading streaming service, whose stock reached a record high on Monday after the weekends successful Tudum 2025 event, just announced that the conclusion to its monster hit series will arrive in three batches. The first four episodes are set to debut on November 26 (the day before Thanksgiving) at 8pm ET, the following three air on Christmas Day at the same time, and the final episode will come out on New Years Eve, also at 8pm ET. Its an innovative, carefully calibrated twist on the staggered streaming release schedule, although some fans seem to find Netflixs upcoming stranglehold on holiday viewing as diabolical as a demogorgon.
Streaming services can go any number of ways these days when putting out a new season of a beloved show. As they assess the right drop pattern, executives tend to consider target audience, episode length, and total number of episodes, alongside other less tangible factors such as whether the show has a 10-hour movie-style continuous story, lending itself more to the binge model, or an intense character-study vibe, which smolders as its doled out.
Netflix has been breaking up hits like Bridgerton into two batched binges for years, while Hulu sticks with full-binge for The Bear, Prime Video offers three episodes to kick off The Boys before slowing down with weekly episodes, and Maxs Hacks sometimes airs an episode or two per week with seemingly no rhyme or reason. If it could be said that there are any rules to how a streamer releases a hot show, these services are rewriting and codifying them in real time.
When Netflix released the most recent season of Stranger Things three summers ago, it set out to monopolize two close-together holidays: Memorial Day and July 4th. The first volume of the fourth season arrived on May 27, 2022, with seven episodes, and then concluded on July 1, with two more. It proved a successful scheduling gambit. All told, the season racked up a seismic 1.352 billion hours of viewing in its first 28 days, ranking as Netflix’s most-watched English-language series, and second overall after the first season of Squid Game. Even more impressive, the fourth season of Stranger Things had no small part in helping the company add 2.41 million subscribers in Q3 2022, when it dropped.
Netflixs approach to scheduling the final season of Stranger Things takes that blatant holiday-ownership approach a step further, though. By stretching out the season across three major end-of-year holidaysduring which families are frequently hunkered down together, hunting for crowd-pleasing popcorn fareNetflix is capitalizing on its captive audience.
As if to underscore the point, the service is bumping up its usual 3am ET drop time for new releases to what is known in terrestrial TV world as prime time, at 8pm ET, when families are more likely to fill up couches together. Its an ingenuous tactic for driving up end-of-year subscriptions, one that will almost certainly end up breaking viewership records. But it also feels rather brazen in its attempt to conquer all family holidays with a gargantuan four-quadrant hit.
When Netflix offered a holiday release for the second season of Squid Game last year, for instance, the service waited until the day after Christmasperhaps out of respect for the sanctity of the holiday, or in fear of being crowded out by too many Home Alone, Elf and National Lampoons Christmas Vacation viewingsand dropped the entire season all at once. This year, Netflix is owning its ambition to dominate the holidays. (To that end, its also building on last years Christmas Day NFL games, which collectively attracted 65 million U.S. viewers, a record for most-streamed NFL games ever, with two more Christmas Day games.) The service clearly has faith that the draw of Stranger Things wrapping up is enough to put A Muppet Christmas Carol and its ilk on the backburner for one year.
Plenty of Stranger Things fans are only too happy to have their family time supplemented by the suburban, supernatural hijinks of the worlds most twentysomething teens.
Guess Im spending the holidays in Hawkins this year, a typical commenter replied to Netflixs tweet announcing the release dates. (And were happy to have ya nerd, Netflix wrote back.)
Not all fans were as excited, though, about the way the final season is being teased out.
Some of them complained about Netflix breaking up the conclusion theyve been waiting three years for into three chunks, prolonging their anticipation. Others seem more opposed to the idea of Netflix encroaching on so much family time with an offer Stranger Things fans cant refusethe TV equivalent of bumping up Black Friday deals to Thursday around dinner time.
All of them will likely tune in to watch, though, along with a billion or two fellow subscribers.
If the grand finale succeeds at the level Netflix expects it to, perhaps the end of Stranger Things will spell the beginning of a new arms race for holiday streaming content, launching in 2026.
President Donald Trump faces the challenge of convincing Republican senators, global investors, voters and even Elon Musk that he won’t bury the federal government in debt with his multitrillion-dollar tax breaks package.
The response so far from financial markets has been skeptical as Trump seems unable to trim deficits as promised.
All of this rhetoric about cutting trillions of dollars of spending has come to nothing and the tax bill codifies that, said Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank. There is a level of concern about the competence of Congress and this administration and that makes adding a whole bunch of money to the deficit riskier.
The White House has viciously lashed out at anyone who has voiced concern about the debt snowballing under Trump, even though it did exactly that in his first term after his 2017 tax cuts.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt opened her briefing Thursday by saying she wanted to debunk some false claims” about his tax cuts.
Leavitt said the “blatantly wrong claim that the One, Big, Beautiful Bill increases the deficit is based on the Congressional Budget Office and other scorekeepers who use shoddy assumptions and have historically been terrible at forecasting across Democrat and Republican administrations alike.
House Speaker Mike Johnson piled onto Congress’ number crunchers on Sunday, telling NBC’s Meet the Press, The CBO sometimes gets projections correct, but theyre always off, every single time, when they project economic growth. They always underestimate the growth that will be brought about by tax cuts and reduction in regulations.
But Trump himself has suggested that the lack of sufficient spending cuts to offset his tax reductions came out of the need to hold the Republican congressional coalition together.
We have to get a lot of votes, Trump said last week. We cant be cutting.
That has left the administration betting on the hope that economic growth can do the trick, a belief that few outside of Trump’s orbit think is viable.
Most economists consider the non-partisan CBO to be the foundational standard for assessing policies, though it does not produce cost estimates for actions taken by the executive branch such as Trumps unilateral tariffs.
Tech billionaire Musk, who was until recently part of Trump’s inner sanctum as the leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, told CBS News: I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing.”
Federal debt keeps rising
The tax and spending cuts that passed the House last month would add more than $5 trillion to the national debt in the coming decade if all of them are allowed to continue, according to the Committee for a Responsible Financial Budget, a fiscal watchdog group.
To make the bill’s price tag appear lower, various parts of the legislation are set to expire. This same tactic was used with Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and it set up this year’s dilemma, in which many of the tax cuts in that earlier package will sunset next year unless Congress renews them.
But the debt is a much bigger problem now than it was eight years ago. Investors are demanding the government pay a higher premium to keep borrowing as the total debt has crossed $36.1 trillion. The interest rate on a 10-year Treasury Note is around 4.5%, up dramatically from the roughly 2.5% rate being charged when the 2017 tax cuts became law.
The White House Council of Economic Advisers argues that its policies will unleash so much rapid growth that the annual budget deficits will shrink in size relative to the overall economy, putting the U.S. government on a fiscally sustainable path.
The council argues the economy would expand over the next four years at an annual average of about 3.2%, instead of the Congressional Budget Office’s expected 1.9%, and as many as 7.4 million jobs would be created or saved.
Council chair Stephen Miran told reporters that when the growth being forecast by the White House is coupled with expected revenues from tariffs, the expected budget deficits will fall. The tax cuts will increase the supply of money for investment, the supply of workers and the supply of domestically produced goods all of which, by Mirans logic, would cause faster growth without creating new inflationary pressures.
I do want to assure everyone that the deficit is a very significant concern for this administration, Miran said.
White House budget director Russell Vought told reporters the idea that the bill is in any way harmful to debt and deficits is fundamentally untrue.
Economists doubt Trump’s plan can spark enough growth to reduce deficits
Most outside economists expect additional debt would keep interest rates higher and slow overall economic growth as the cost of borrowing for homes, cars, businesses and even college educations would increase.
This just adds to the problem future policymakers are going to face, said Brendan Duke, a former Biden administration aide now at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank. Duke said that with the tax cuts in the bill set to expire in 2028, lawmakers would be dealing with Social Security, Medicare and expiring tax cuts at the same time.
Kent Smetters, faculty director of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, said the growth projections from Trump’s economic team are a work of fiction. He said the bill would lead some workers to choose to work fewer hours in order to qualify for Medicaid.
I dont know of any serious forecaster that has meaningfully raised their growth forecast because of this legislation, said Harvard University professor Jason Furman, who was the Council of Economic Advisers chair under the Obama administration. These are mostly not growth- and competitiveness-oriented tax cuts. And, in fact, the higher long-term interest rates will go the other way and hurt growth.
The White House’s inability so far to calm deficit concerns is stirring up political blowback for Trump as the tax and spending cuts approved by the House now move to the Senate. Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky have both expressed concerns about the likely defict increases, with Paul saying Sunday there are enough GOP senators to stall the bill until deficits are addressed.
I think there are four of us at this point” who would oppose the legislation if the bill, at least, is not modified in a good direction, Paul said on CBS’ Face the Nation.”
The GOP will own the debt once they vote for this,” Paul said.
Four Republican holdouts would be enough to halt the bill in the Senate, where the party holds a three-seat majority.
Trump banking on tariff revenues to help
The White House is also banking that tariff revenues will help cover the additional deficits, even though recent court rulings cast doubt on the legitimacy of Trump declaring an economic emergency to impose sweeping taxes on imports.
When Trump announced his near-universal tariffs in April, he specifically said his policies would generate enough new revenues to start paying down the national debt. His comments dovetailed with remarks by aides, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, that yearly budget deficits could be more than halved.
Its our turn to prosper and in so doing, use trillions and trillions of dollars to reduce our taxes and pay down our national debt, and itll all happen very quickly, Trump said two months ago as he talked up his import taxes and encouraged lawmakers to pass the separate tax and spending cuts.
The Trump administration is correct that growth can help reduce deficit pressures, but it’s not enough on its own to accomplish the task, according to new research by economists Douglas Elmendorf, Glenn Hubbard and Zachary Liscow.
Ernie Tedeschi, director of economics at the Budget Lab at Yale University, said additional growth doesn’t even get us close to where we need to be.
The government would need $10 trillion of deficit reduction over the next 10 years just to stabilize the debt, Tedeschi said. And even though the White House says the tax cuts would add to growth, most of the cost goes to preserve existing tax breaks, so that’s unlikely to boost the economy meaningfully.
It’s treading water, Tedeschi said.
Josh Boak, Associated Press
