WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Vice President Mike Pence’s foundation is launching a $10 million campaign to preserve Trump-era tax cuts that are set to expire after next year as he urges conservatives not to to deviate from the fight before the November elections.
Advancing American Freedom released a 13-page blueprint Thursday that makes arguments against Capitol Hill and against voters in swing states, especially those that could decide control of the Senate.
“We will urge conservative leaders to join us in this fight,” the document said.
The group envisions a protracted campaign that will continue until 2025, when the White House and Congress will have to decide whether to keep or make adjustments to the tax law passed in the 2017 tax law when Republican Donald Trump was president. implement. If nothing is done, much of the individual tax policy would expire after 2025.
Much will depend on the centers of power in the House of Representatives and the Senate and which party controls the White House.
Democratic President Joe Biden has proposed keeping tax cuts for people making less than $400,000 a year while raising business rates and imposing higher taxes on the wealthy. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for the White House, also wants to keep the tax cuts for many households, but he proposes lowering the corporate tax rate from the current rate of 21% to 20%.
“Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” Pence said in a statement. “Our national debt is out of control, and taxing the American people more is not the answer.”
Former Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican who was instrumental in crafting the 2017 tax bill, is a strong supporter of the foundation’s campaign to expand tax policy.
The boost comes as Congress has quietly begun crafting tax policy ahead of next year’s session, when lawmakers must address the issue or risk some of the 2017 policies expiring, potentially raising taxes for many individuals .
The federal balance sheet is in the red, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said this week, with spending exceeding revenue. That’s thanks in large part to COVID-era spending, funding the war in Ukraine and the costs of Medicare, Medicaid and other programs, especially to care for America’s aging population.
A May CBO report estimated that extending the provisions of Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would increase deficits by nearly $5 trillion through 2034.
