The “Big, Beautiful Bill” they were discussing is the House GOP reconciliation package that became the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (H.R. 1, 119th Congress), signed into law on July 4, 2025.

Observed deficits so far: For the first full fiscal year in this Trump term (FY 2025, ending Sept. 30, 2025), the federal budget deficit was about $1.8 trillion, essentially flat versus FY 2024 and well below $2.5 trillion. (reuters.com) That is after the bill’s passage, so the realized deficit has not yet “climbed to $2.5 trillion” annually.

Forward-looking projections under current law and the bill: Before the bill, CBO’s January 2025 baseline already projected deficits rising from $1.9T in 2025 to about $2.6T by 2034–2035. (americanactionforum.org) After enactment, CBO scoring (summarized by the American Action Forum) found the One Big Beautiful Bill increases cumulative deficits by about $4.1T over 2025–2034, with annual deficits rising to about $3.0T in 2034, roughly $400B higher than the pre‑bill baseline in that year. (americanactionforum.org) A separate analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget puts post‑bill deficits over 2026–2035 about $1T higher than CBO’s earlier baseline, with 2035 around $2.6T. (reuters.com)

Implication for the prediction: Friedberg’s normalized claim is that, under this bill and current trajectory, the deficit will rise to roughly $2.5T per year and then stay around that level for multiple consecutive years. As of November 30, 2025:

• We have only one completed fiscal year after the bill’s introduction and only a few months after its enactment.
• The realized deficit is ~$1.8T, not ~$2.5T.
• Long‑term projections do show deficits eventually approaching or exceeding $2.5T in the 2030s, but those years have not occurred yet, and projections could change.

Because the core of the prediction concerns the medium‑/long‑run level of the deficit in years we have not yet reached, there isn’t enough realized data to say whether the U.S. will, in fact, sustain ~$2.5T annual deficits for “the foreseeable future.”

Therefore, the status of this prediction is inconclusive (too early to tell).