UPDATE (July 1, 2025, 12:16 p.m. ET): The Senate narrowly approved a massive, far-right legislative package on Tuesday. The bill passed 50-50, with three Republicans and all Democrats voting against final passage and Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie.

Shortly after midnight, with the fate of the Republican Party’s domestic policy megabill uncertain, Donald Trump used his social media platform to tout the far-right legislation’s virtues. The president similarly warned of what would happen if GOP lawmakers didn’t pass the package.

“The failure to pass means a whopping 68% Tax increase, the largest in history!!!” he wrote on Tuesday.

For those who keep an eye on Trump’s rhetoric, the claim was familiar. At a White House event last week intended to boost the proposal, he similarly declared, “If the bill doesn’t pass, there’ll be a 68% tax increase. Think of that, 68%, which would be the largest in history.” Over the weekend, during the president’s latest Fox News interview, he said the same thing: “It’s very important. If we don’t have it, there’s a 68% tax increase.”

Trump touted the same line via social media, starting in late May and throughout the month of June. Conservative media outlets have, predictably, echoed the White House’s talking point as if it were true.

But it’s not. As a CNN fact-check report explained:

Trump’s claim is false. There is no credible basis for the claim that failing to pass the bill would result in anywhere near a 68% tax increase. One analysis from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center think tank found that taxes would rise by an average of about 7.5% in 2026 if Trump’s bill didn’t pass. Asked for comment by CNN, the White House did not attempt to address the ‘68%’ figure even on condition of anonymity; it also provided no comment to other fact-checkers earlier in the month.

There is some question as to how, exactly, the president settled on this rather specific statistic. To be sure, Trump isn’t above simply making up a figure out of whole cloth and pretending that it’s true, but in this case, there is apparently a prevailing guess about the claim’s origins.

Evidently, a Tax Policy Center estimate concluded in March that if the Republicans’ tax breaks from Trump’s first term were allowed to expire — as they are poised to do if the inaptly named One Big Beautiful Bill Act falls short — roughly 64% of American households would end up paying more in taxes than they’re paying now. Perhaps the president got a little confused and bumped that number up from 64% to 68%.

Recommended

Maddowblog

Social Security Administration takes a step too far with deceptive email on megabill

Steve Benen

Maddowblog

On Medicaid and Social Security, Trump flubs the details of his own megabill

Steve Benen

That said, even if the Tax Policy Center’s analysis is correct, Trump’s claim is still plainly wrong: There’s an enormous substantive difference between two-thirds of households paying more in taxes and a 68% tax increase.

And yet, the bill’s principal cheerleader has been peddling this bogus claim, ad nauseam, for the last several weeks.

At a White House event last week, a reporter asked Trump a straightforward question about the 68% claim: “Where does that number come from?”

The president hemmed and hawed a bit before saying that the statistic is true “according to what they tell me.” He concluded, “They say that you’d have about a 68% tax increase.”

I don’t know who “they” are, but I do know that the claim is bogus; Trump should stop repeating it; and anyone who believes this is falling for nonsense.