Republicans in Congress aren’t quite sure how or when to extend the party’s 2017 tax package, but there’s no doubt it will be at the top of the GOP’s priority list for the next Congress. One of the challenges facing the party, however, is how to pay for more tax cuts — or whether to even try.
In case anyone has forgotten, when Donald Trump and his allies pushed for massive tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations in 2017, one of Republicans’ main arguments was that they didn’t have to offset the costs of the cuts. Party officials instead argued with great sincerity that tax breaks for the rich and big corporations would magically pay for themselves through increased growth.
The bizarre claim has been thoroughly and repeatedly discredited, but too many Republican officials who should know better continue to cling to the fiction. For example, Politico reported last week:
Some lawmakers are going off the menu with their own dynamic analyses. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), another tax writer, says he believes [2017 law] generated so much economic activity that it almost completely paid for itself, even though that’s hardly what the official forecasts say. So, he says, if they just expand that law, most of that will be paid for. “That is often not appreciated,” he says.
It is “often not appreciated” because the underlying claim has no basis in reality. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained in a report published this summer, the Republican Party’s 2017 tax cut package was downright irresponsible when it comes to fiscal responsibility.
If we’re looking for explanations for why Trump added nearly $8 trillion to the national debt during his first term — much of which occurred before the 2020 pandemic — the obvious and correct answer is the tax breaks he signed into law .
It is against this backdrop that the Congressional Budget Office examined the impact of the Republican Party’s tax policy expansion, and as The Washington Post reported, the price tag was enormous.
The price tag for extending the tax cuts continues to rise, according to nonpartisan congressional accountants. … Extending the tax cuts would increase the national debt by more than $4 trillion over the next decade, a huge amount that could deter foreign investors and raise borrowing costs.
The article added that some Republican lawmakers are exploring ways to offset some of the costs, including through “changes to Medicaid.”
I can now see the 2026 campaign ads: Republicans undermined health care benefits for low-income families because they wanted to allow tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.
The CBO’s findings did not go unnoticed among Democrats in Congress. Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, ranking member of the House Budget Committee, said in a written statement that the Republican Party’s tax cuts “don’t pay for themselves — they never have, and they never will.”
Boyle added: “Adding $4.6 trillion to the deficit is not only reckless – it is a direct attack on the hardworking families that Republicans claim to represent. …The hypocrisy is breathtaking. Republicans lecture us about fiscal responsibility when it comes to helping working families, but they have no problem blowing up the budget deficit to reward the wealthy and well-connected.”
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
