One of President Donald Trump’s greatest political strengths has suddenly become a weakness. He won a second term in large part because voters believed he could boost the economy. Instead, Trump has shrunk it, and his tariffs have sent both the stock market and consumer confidence tumbling.

Republicans in Congress could soon make things much worse. GOP leaders are struggling to reconcile deep divisions as they try to pass Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill,” which encompasses the bulk of his domestic agenda. The plan revolves around his 2017 tax cuts; Republicans want to permanently extend them before they expire at the end of the year, but they can’t agree on how to cover the more than $5 trillion price tag—or whether to cover it at all. The likeliest outcome, analysts say, is a bill that adds trillions to federal deficits, which could cause an already shaky economy to collapse.

The GOP stands virtually no chance of stabilizing the nation’s finances, the Republican economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin told me. The only question, he said, is “how much worse will it be when they’re done?”