But the One Big Beautiful Bill wasn't the only legislation affecting America's finances during Trump's first year back in office. Smaller bills, spending decisions, and budgetary maneuvers also contributed to the country's growing debt. Some of these measures attracted relatively little public attention, despite having consequences that could stretch across an entire decade.
One of the most significant examples was a spending bill that appeared, at first glance, to be little more than a routine government funding measure.
The $66 Billion Cost of Keeping the Government Open
On March 15, 2025, Donald Trump signed the Full-Year Continuing Appropriations and Extensions Act, 2025, also known as Public Law 119-4.
The legislation kept the federal government funded through September 30, 2025, avoiding a government shutdown. Continuing resolutions are hardly unusual in Washington. Congress has repeatedly relied on temporary funding measures when lawmakers cannot agree on a complete set of annual appropriations bills.
However, this particular measure included a provision with a substantial long-term financial consequence: it rescinded approximately $20.2 billion in previously approved funding for Internal Revenue Service enforcement.
At first, that might sound like a straightforward spending cut. The government was cancelling money that had been allocated to the IRS, so surely that would reduce the deficit?
Not necessarily.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that reducing IRS enforcement funding would mean fewer audits and other enforcement actions. That, in turn, would mean less tax revenue collected from individuals and businesses that might otherwise have been investigated.
The result was an estimated $66 billion increase in federal deficits over the 2025–2034 period.
In other words, Congress cancelled billions in funding intended to help the government collect taxes, but the anticipated reduction in tax collections was considerably larger than the money saved.
This is an important distinction. The $66 billion figure was not the amount of money handed out by the government. It was the projected loss of revenue over a ten-year period.
The legislation also continued funding decisions inherited from the previous fiscal year, rather than undertaking a comprehensive review and restructuring of federal spending. That meant the government continued operating with much of its existing spending structure intact.
The Laken Riley Act and the Cost of Immigration Enforcement
Another early piece of legislation signed by Trump was the Laken Riley Act, which became law on January 29, 2025.
The act expanded the circumstances under which federal authorities are required to detain certain non-citizens accused of, charged with, or convicted of specified offenses. It also gave states additional legal standing to challenge certain federal immigration decisions.
The legislation was politically significant, but its financial implications require some care.
Detaining more people requires additional detention facilities, personnel, transportation, court resources, and administrative capacity. Those expenses can become substantial when immigration enforcement expands.
However, the Congressional Budget Office's earlier analysis of a similar version of the legislation did not identify a significant direct increase in mandatory spending or federal revenue losses. The costs of additional enforcement would depend partly on future appropriations and how extensively the law was implemented.
It would therefore be misleading to attach a specific multibillion-dollar price tag to the Laken Riley Act itself without a reliable estimate.
The larger immigration-enforcement spending increases that followed in 2025 were addressed through other funding measures, particularly the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Those expenditures belong in the separate discussion of that legislation rather than being counted twice here.
The Continuing Appropriations Habit
There is another problem with the way Washington handles federal spending: temporary funding measures can become a substitute for actual budget reform.
The March 2025 continuing appropriations legislation maintained government operations without requiring lawmakers to negotiate twelve new, comprehensive annual spending bills.
That approach may prevent government shutdowns, but it also makes it easier for existing spending commitments to continue without much public debate.
The federal budget contains enormous recurring expenses, including defense, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, federal salaries, and interest payments on existing debt. A continuing resolution does not automatically create a new multibillion-dollar program, but it can preserve spending levels that lawmakers have not meaningfully reconsidered.
It is important not to confuse the total amount of government spending authorized under a continuing resolution with the additional amount of debt it creates. Much of that spending would have occurred anyway under existing appropriations. The more useful question is how the legislation changes projected spending and revenue compared with the previous budget baseline.
In the case of the March 2025 law, the CBO identified the loss of anticipated IRS revenue as the most significant long-term deficit effect in its analysis.
The Problem With Small Legislative Decisions
The $66 billion estimate is considerably smaller than the projected cost of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but it is hardly insignificant.
It illustrates a recurring problem in American fiscal policy: lawmakers often treat spending cuts and revenue reductions as though they are interchangeable.
Cancelling $20 billion in IRS enforcement funding sounds like saving $20 billion. But if that decision results in tens of billions of dollars in taxes going uncollected, the government may end up in a worse financial position.
There are also important distinctions between legislation that directly increases spending, legislation that reduces tax revenue, and legislation that simply maintains existing government operations. All three can affect the national debt, but they should not be treated as identical.
And not every bill signed by Trump in 2025 deserves to be assigned a multibillion-dollar price tag. The Laken Riley Act, for example, had potential implementation costs, but a reliable direct deficit estimate should not be invented simply to make a list longer.
The Bigger Picture
The smaller legislative decisions of 2025 were not responsible for anything approaching the projected cost of Trump's major tax-and-spending legislation. Nevertheless, they demonstrate how seemingly modest decisions can have substantial long-term financial consequences.
The March 2025 continuing appropriations law alone was projected by the Congressional Budget Office to increase deficits by approximately $66 billion over ten years, largely because of reduced IRS enforcement and the resulting loss of tax revenue.
That is a considerable amount of money for a bill that was primarily presented as a way to keep the government operating.
And then there was the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
That legislation was in an entirely different financial category. Its projected $4.2 trillion addition to federal debt over the 2025–2034 period was so enormous that it deserves its own examination, including the tax cuts, spending changes, projected interest costs, and the political decisions behind it.
The smaller bills may have added billions, but the biggest bill was playing an entirely different game.