WASHINGTON (AP) — A tax break for millionaires, and almost everyone else.
The COVID-19-era government subsidies that some Americans have used to buy health insurance are coming to an end.
Restrictions on food stamps, including for women and children, and other safety net programs. Rolling back to Biden-era green energy programs. Mass deportations. Cutting government jobs to ‘drain the swamp’.
After winning the election and taking power, Republicans are planning an ambitious 100-day agenda with newly elected President Donald Trump in the White House and Republican lawmakers in a majority in Congress to achieve their policy goals.
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At the top of the list is the Republican Party’s plan to extend about $4 trillion in expiring tax cuts, a signature domestic achievement of Trump’s first term and an issue that could define his return to the White House.
“What we’re focused on now is getting ready, Day 1,” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, after recently meeting with GOP colleagues to map out the road ahead dot.
The new policy will reinvigorate long-running debates over America’s priorities, yawning income inequality and the appropriate size and scope of its government, especially in light of ballooning federal deficits that now total nearly $2 trillion a year.
The discussions will test whether Trump and his Republican allies can achieve the kind of real-world results that were wanted, needed or supported when voters gave party control of Congress and the White House.
“The past is really prologue here,” says Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, recalling the 2017 tax debate.
Trump’s first term was defined by the tax cuts, which were passed by Republicans in Congress and signed into law only after their initial campaign promise to “repeal and replace” Democratic President Barack Obama’s health care law sputtered and failed in the famous thumbs-down voice. against then-Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
The Republican majority in Congress quickly moved to cut taxes, with the multi-trillion dollar package assembled and passed by the end of the year.
In the time since Trump signed these cuts into law, the big benefits have accrued to higher-income households. The top 1 percent — those earning nearly $1 million or more — received an income tax cut of about $60,000, while those with lower incomes got only a few hundred dollars, according to the Tax Policy Center and other groups. Some people ended up paying about the same.
“The big economic story in the US is rising income equality,” Owens said. “And that’s actually, interestingly enough, a tax story.”
In preparation for Trump’s return, Republicans in Congress have been meeting privately for months with the president-elect to discuss proposals to extend and strengthen tax breaks, some of which would otherwise expire in 2025.
That means maintaining different tax brackets and a standardized deduction for individual earners, along with existing rates for so-called pass-through entities such as law firms, doctor’s offices or corporations that consider their income as individual income.
Normally, the price tag for the tax cuts would be prohibitive. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that maintaining the expiring provisions would add about $4 trillion to deficits over 10 years.
On top of that, Trump wants to include his own priorities in the tax package, including lowering the corporate rate, which is now 21% from the 2017 law, to 15%, and eliminating individual taxes on tips and overtime.
But Avik Roy, president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, said it is “just nonsense” to blame the tax cuts for the country’s income inequality, because they benefited taxpayers up and down the income ladder. Instead, he points to other factors, including the Federal Reserve’s historically low interest rates, that make it possible to borrow cheaply, even for the wealthy.
“Americans don’t care if Elon Musk is rich,” Roy said. “What they find important is: what are you doing to make their lives better?”
Normally, lawmakers want the costs of a policy change to be offset by budget revenues or cuts elsewhere. But in this case, there are virtually no agreed-upon revenue increases or cuts to the $6 trillion annual budget that could cover such a huge price tag.
Instead, some Republicans have argued that the tax breaks will pay for themselves, thanks to trickle-down revenues from potential economic growth. Trump’s tariffs implemented this past week could provide a new source of offsetting revenue.
Some Republicans argue that there is a precedent for simply extending the tax cuts without offsetting the costs because they are not new changes but existing federal policy.
“If you just extend current law, we’re not raising taxes, we’re not lowering taxes,” Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, the new chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, told Fox News.
He said criticism that tax cuts would increase the deficit is “ridiculous.” There’s a difference between taxes and spending, he said, “and we just need to get that message across to America.”
At the same time, the new Congress will also consider cuts, particularly in food stamps and health care programs, goals that conservatives have long sought as part of the annual appropriations process.
There will almost certainly be one cut to the COVID-19-era subsidy, which helps cover the cost of health insurance for people who buy their own policies through the Affordable Care Act exchange.
The additional health care subsidies were extended through 2025 in Democratic President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which also includes several green energy tax breaks that Republicans want to roll back.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York scoffed at Republican claims that they had won “a big, massive mandate” — while Democrats and Republicans in the House actually fought to a tie on the November elections. with the Republican Party gaining a narrow majority.
“This idea of some mandate to make massive, far-right, extreme policy changes doesn’t exist — it doesn’t exist,” Jeffries said.
Republicans plan to use a budget process called reconciliation that would allow majority passage in Congress, mainly along party lines, without the threat of a filibuster in the Senate that could stop advances on a bill unless 60 of the 100 senators vote. agree to it.
It’s the same process Democrats used when they had the power in Washington to pass the Inflation Reduction Act and Obama’s health care law over the objections of the Republican Party.
Republicans have been here before with Trump and control of Congress, which is no guarantee they will be able to achieve their goals, especially in the face of Democrats’ resistance.
Still, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., who has worked closely with Trump on the agenda, has promised a “breakneck” pace in the first 100 days “because we have a lot to fix.”
