Oklahoma Congressman Josh Brecheen admits he was hesitant to recently vote in the House for the Senate-amended One Big Beautiful Bill because of the Senate changes regarding green energy projects from the Biden administration.
But he said he remained committed to the principle of restoring fiscal sanity in Washington, D.C.
“Specifically, the Senate removed $500 billion in spending cuts over the ten-year budget window and gave wind and solar tax credits a longer time period before repeal. After conversations with the President, the Vice President, and White House staff, however, I became convinced that amending the OBBB and then sending it back to the Senate would not be a successful strategy,” said Brecheen in a weekend update to his constituents.
Rep. Brecheen is a member of the House Budget Committee and the House Freedom Caucus and played an active role in the negotiations.
“Unfortunately, a small group of liberal-minded Senate Republicans, such as Lisa Murkowski, remained opposed to meaningful fiscal reforms and to ending the green energy tax credits. Rather than increasing savings, those Senators would have further amended the OBBB, thereby increasing the deficit and adding more liberal provisions to the bill.”
Brecheen said he was grateful the President decided to further address what the bill did not do on the green energy front, “one of the larget debt drivers facing our nation, given the large cost of green energy tax subsidies.”
“Under the Biden Administration, green energy subsidies were handed out with virtually no guardrails, allowing almost any project to qualify. By signing this executive order, President Trump is taking a necessary step to rein in that abuse. I am optimistic that the White House will take even more steps on this front in the days to come.”
Below is the congressman’s entire statement:
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On July 4th, 2025, President Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) into law, securing numerous conservative wins for our nation, many of which you have likely already read about. I will include details about these wins at the end of this letter. Along with my fellow members of the House Freedom Caucus, I fought to make the OBBB better at every stage. As President Trump’s team confirmed following the bill’s passage, the House Freedom Caucus’s efforts “reset the spending fight,” forcing further savings to be a part of the final reconciliation package. The OBBB now includes the greatest amount of mandatory spending cuts ever passed by any Congress due to the efforts of the House Budget Committee and the House Freedom Caucus forcing these cuts in negotiations with House and Senate Leadership. As a member of both the House Budget Committee and the House Freedom Caucus, I played an active role in these negotiations. It is an honor to have helped achieve the best bargain we could on the fiscal front. Republicans initially set a $300 billion spending reduction goal for the OBBB, which many of us opposed, given its low savings threshold. At every turn, the House Freedom Caucus and the House Budget Committee fought for more cuts, ultimately delivering over $1.6 trillion in spending reductions. Again, the OBBB achieves the most spending cuts ever achieved by any Congress in our nation’s history. I remain committed to the principle of restoring fiscal sanity in Washington, DC. For this reason, I had hesitations in casting my final vote on the OBBB due to the changes the Senate made to the House version of the bill just 48 hours before the vote. Specifically, the Senate removed $500 billion in spending cuts over the ten-year budget window and gave wind and solar tax credits a longer time period before repeal. After conversations with the President, the Vice President, and White House staff, however, I became convinced that amending the OBBB and then sending it back to the Senate would not be a successful strategy. Unfortunately, a small group of liberal-minded Senate Republicans, such as Lisa Murkowski, remained opposed to meaningful fiscal reforms and to ending the green energy tax credits. Rather than increasing savings, those Senators would have further amended the OBBB, thereby increasing the deficit and adding more liberal provisions to the bill. After significant assurances from the White House, even up until the early morning hours of July 3rd, that the House Freedom Caucus’s concerns, were shared and that future efforts would made in advancing the America First agenda, I reached the conclusion to vote “yes” on the OBBB, believing it was the most conservative and fiscally responsible outcome we could achieve during the reconciliation process. I am grateful to the President for the decisions he has made following the passage of the OBBB, further addressing what the bill did not do on the green energy front, one of the largest debt drivers facing our nation, given the large cost of green energy tax subsidies. Specifically, the President signed an Executive Order on July 7th, 2025, ensuring anti-abuse rules are in place regarding unreliable and foreign-controlled energy sources such as wind and solar. Under the Biden Administration, green energy subsidies were handed out with virtually no guardrails, allowing almost any project to qualify. By signing this executive order, President Trump is taking a necessary step to rein in that abuse. I am optimistic that the White House will take even more steps on this front in the days to come. The passage of the OBBB is tied to factors of economic growth, President Trump’s 10% tariff revenue floor, and less pressure now on the annual discretionary budget (due to changes in the defense spending process). When considering these factors, I feel confident that our ten-year debt outlook will not be increased. Additionally, under a best-case scenario, these elements could achieve upwards of $2 trillion in savings over the ten-year budget window, along with meaningful debt-to-GDP reduction for the first time in a quarter of a century. While I wish that the House version of the OBBB would have been the final product signed into law due to its even greater savings and improved conservative policies, the OBBB, as it stands, is still a very worthy accomplishment. Adding to the confusion surrounding the OBBB, many mainstream media outlets have shared conflicting information regarding the bill’s cost. The spending scores provided by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) do not fully take into consideration the revenue that will be spurred by the OBBB’s policies, and that it will generate significant economic growth. Neither do they consider savings made by discretionary cuts, deregulation, rescissions, or tariffs. For those who remain skeptical, I will unpack the math below: ECONOMIC GROWTH When calculating the cost of the OBBB, the Congressional Budget Office only assumed 1.8% year-over-year economic growth each year over the next 10 years. For the past 50 years, however, our annual average growth has been 3.2% and growth during the last 25 years has averaged around 2.2%. |
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This means that the CBO’s 1.8% growth assumption is neither reasonable nor based on historical fact, especially considering that President Trump achieved a 2.8% growth rate pre-COVID during his first term, largely due to his pro-growth policies. It is reasonable to expect that Trump-era policies will once again stimulate such growth during the remaining three and a half years of the President’s second administration. Should such growth be achieved, the CBO score undercuts revenue by approximately $3 trillion. This is because for every 1% change, year-over-year, sustained for 10 years, this equates to about $3 trillion more in revenue coming into the US Treasury. It is reasonable to believe we can once again achieve 2.8% growth both during and after President Trump’s second term in office, given his commitment to cutting 10 existing regulations for every new regulation created. The case for a deregulation simulated economy can be found in a Mercatus Center study that explains the economic growth that deregulation triggers. If we could achieve even half of what the study suggests, we would see tremendous economic gain, including an 8.62% one-time increase in real GDP. We’ll explain this math in the postscript. TARIFF REVENUE From tariff revenue alone, the nonpartisan CBO says that President Trump’s baseline 10% tariff policy will generate a minimum of $800 billion during the remainder of his second administration and at least $2.2 trillion total if maintained over the ten-year budget window. This $800 billion (minimum) in revenue is just one major area that offsets the savings lost by the Senate revisions to our House version of the OBBB. While this tariff revenue is not included within the math on the CBO’s cost and savings projections for the OBBB, it is nonetheless a direct result of President Trump’s decisions and will significantly impact our fiscal trajectory. Just this year alone, the United States has already taken in an unexpected $100 billion due to President Trump’s tariffs. Objectively speaking, this tariff revenue provides a safety net if projections do not get met on other fronts. Although I had hoped that this tariff revenue would be used to decrease the annual deficits (which it still could), it provides a cushion for budget neutrality for the Senate’s changes to the OBBB. ADDITIONAL PROJECTED SAVINGS Other savings included within the OBBB that are not being accounted for by the mainstream media are from the internal commitment to hold FY26 spending flat, as a part of the OBBB design. This will save at least $500 billion over ten years compared to the CBO projections on growth and discretionary spending that will now not occur in the discretionary side of the budget. These savings will occur because we moved over $100 billion in increased defense spending into the OBBB, thereby eliminating the need to increase the discretionary side of the ledger. Because of this, there is now a strong belief that we have the potential to hold spending flat in the discretionary budget, resulting in additional savings upwards of $1 trillion if we are able to do this for the remainder of President Trump’s second term. This is important because, for years, Democrats have demanded non-defense spending increases for every dollar of defense spending that Republicans ask for. By moving defense spending onto the mandatory side of the ledger, the Democrats’ leverage to extract more non-defense spending increases each year, now disappears. Keep in mind that it requires 60 votes to pass the discretionary budget in the Senate, meaning that our 53-seat Republican majority needs Democratic support to pass yearly discretionary spending measures. I am optimistic that moving defense spending increases into the mandatory side of the ledger will bring about significant savings year-over-year. 30,000-FOOT VIEW The savings that I have detailed above, in tandem with the passage of the OBBB, should reassure you that holding our debt harmless was a major consideration for many fiscal conservatives when we voted for this legislation. We have optimism that, beyond holding our debt harmless, there is potential to reduce deficits over the ten-year budget window if tariff revenue and growth projections meet or exceed expectations. Importantly, we also have to keep in mind the alternative–what would have occurred absent this bill passing. Had President Trump’s tax cuts not been extended, a recession would likely have occurred throughout the United States, as the tax increase on average American families would have been a minimum of $1,700 per year, per family of four. This would have been unacceptable, as Americans are still recovering from the devastating 40-year-high inflation that was caused by the liberal policies enacted by the Biden Administration. Had the OBBB not passed and a tax hike had occurred, this would have drastically harmed American families. Let me be clear–tax hikes will not solve the problem of our nearly $2 trillion annual deficit. As Ronald Reagan once said, “We don’t have deficits because people are taxed too little. We have deficits because big government spends too much.” Despite our deficits, Congress spends at 23% relative to our GDP, which is a problem considering that we have, on average, only brought in 17% average in tax revenue each year, for the last 80 years. It is important to note that when we get above this average, the American people demand tax relief, echoing our founding principle of opposing excessive taxation. If the OBBB had not passed and the tax hike had occurred, a 3% change would have been the long-term effect, exceeding this 80-year average and rising past levels of what Americans deem acceptable. Keep in mind, the super majority of the tax relief provided by the OBBB went to middle-class Americans, with the “largest proportional tax benefits” going to those individuals making under $50,000 per year, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. Should the OBBB not have been passed, it would have been the average Oklahoman paying the price and suffering as a result. In an effort to avoid a tax increase and ALSO enact significant spending reforms, it required a handful of us in the House to work for months in negotiations with Leadership to make this happen. It is a sad reality that among 220 House Republicans, only a small percentage are truly dedicated to forcing fiscal discipline. Our culture has become used to continuous deficit spending, and, unfortunately, there is not enough pressure on Congress from the American people to direct real fiscal change. For this reason, the fight to pass the most conservative bill possible turned into a situation of leverage. The House Freedom Caucus and the House Budget Committee Members held people’s feet to the fire for as long as we had the political pathway to do so while fighting to deliver the best Big Beautiful Bill possible. Ultimately, our negotiation resulted in $1.6 trillion in spending cuts rather than the mere $300 billion that some members of the conference originally placed as the spending reduction goal. Let me end by highlighting the significant policy achievements found within the OBBB:
Throughout the process of passing the One Big Beautiful Bill, I remained prayerful while examining the facts. I am grateful for your trust as I strive to represent your values and uphold the convictions that we, as Oklahomans, hold dear. POSTSCRIPT: According to the 2016 Mercatus Center study, if the federal government’s regulatory framework went back to how it was in the 1980s, we would add $4 trillion to our GDP. By updating this decade-old study, given the 10-year growth rate that actually occurred since then, we can now safely estimate that $5 trillion would be added to our overall GDP if we returned to the 1980s regulatory levels. Growing our GDP by $5 trillion–from approximately $29 trillion to $34 trillion–would result in a 17.24% one-time bump in real GDP within a strong deregulatory environment. The 17.24% one-time bump is calculated by dividing the projected $5 trillion GDP increase by America’s current $29 trillion GDP. President Trump’s promise to repeal ten existing regulations for every new bureaucratic rule created will absolutely initiate a deregulatory environment. Although we cannot promise that we will return to 1980s regulatory levels, given political opposition from those Members of Congress opposed to deregulation, achieving half of this is within our reach. Doing so would achieve an 8.62% one-time increase in real GDP. |
