The Congressional Budget Office dropped a number this week that should make every working family in this country furious: $2.1 trillion. That is the projected federal deficit for fiscal year 2026, revised upward by $200 billion from the $1.9 trillion the CBO estimated just months ago. And the single biggest reason is the tariff scheme Donald Trump sold to the public as a magic revenue machine.
It was never a machine. It was a con.
After the Supreme Court struck down tariffs Trump imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act in February, the whole house of cards collapsed. The CBO now estimates tariff and customs duty collections will come in roughly $250 billion below earlier expectations. The government has already handed back about $100 billion of the $166 billion it collected, according to a court filing cited by The Hill. Let that sink in. The administration collected $166 billion in tariff duties and has already returned more than half of it. That is not a revenue strategy. That is a refund line.
Shealeah Craighead (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsMeanwhile, the people who actually pay the price of this fiscal mismanagement are not the ones who designed it. They never are.
Rising spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid accounted for roughly 86% of the yearly increase in outlays. Net interest payments on the public debt climbed another $117 billion. During the first 10 months of fiscal 2026, the government ran a $1.8 trillion deficit, with revenues increasing $139 billion while outlays jumped $308 billion. Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, called the figures “astounding” and said, “We’re on track to surpass $2 trillion in borrowing this fiscal year despite not being in a recession. That is not normal.”
She is right. It is not normal. But it is also not an accident. This is what happens when a government prioritizes spectacle over substance, when trade policy is dictated by a president who treats the Treasury like a branding exercise and then watches the courts dismantle his handiwork. The tariff revenue was always speculative. The experts said so. The lived experience of importers and consumers said so. And now the CBO’s own numbers confirm it.
Congressional Budget Office (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsHere is the structural truth that the deficit hawks in Congress will never say out loud: the drivers of this deficit are not foreign aid or social programs or waste, fraud, and abuse. They are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on debt that was already ballooning before Trump ever returned to office. These are obligations. They are commitments this country made to its people. The question is not whether to honor them. The question is who should bear the cost when revenue collapses because of reckless, legally dubious trade policy.
The answer from this administration and its allies in Congress will be the same as it always is: working people. They will point at the $2.1 trillion and demand cuts to the programs that keep families alive. They will never mention the $250 billion tariff shortfall. They will never mention the $100 billion already refunded. They will never mention that the deficit grew because their own policy failed.
That is the fight ahead. Every community that depends on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid needs to understand what is coming. The numbers are on the table. The CBO has done its job. Now the people who actually hold power need to be held accountable for the hole they blew in the budget, and the rest of us need to make sure they do not fill it with our livelihoods.
Solidarity is not a slogan here. It is a budget line. Defend it.