By Nandita Bose
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – President Donald Trump capped a frenzied first week back in office with a stop in Las Vegas on Saturday to talk about cutting taxes on tips, a 2024 campaign promise he made in the gambling and hospitality hub.
Since taking office Monday, the new Republican president reversed many policies established by Democratic predecessor Joe Biden and moved to fulfill his vow to remake and shrink the federal bureaucracy.
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During visits on Friday to disaster zones in North Carolina and California, Trump pledged federal aid to help those states recover from hurricane and wildfires following a move to close the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In Las Vegas, Trump was expected to discuss a less controversial pledge to end the taxation of income from tips and overtime, a proposal he first made in June while hosting service members in the presidential swing state of Nevada. The tip-heavy hospitality industry comprises more than a fifth of jobs.
“Do you remember that little statement about tips?” Trump said during one of several Inauguration Day speeches on Monday. “Anyone remember that little statement? I think we won Nevada because of that statement.”
Michael McDonald, chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, said the idea is attractive to people in the state who face high prices for essential goods such as food and gas.
“He cares about the no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security. That was something that we brought to the community, and everyone loved it because we’re all hurting,” McDonald told local television after welcoming Trump to Friday evening.
Trump pledged to pursue an aggressive agenda of tax cuts if re-elected, which could face some hurdles even in a US Congress controlled by his fellow Republicans.
The proposals Trump made on the campaign trail — from expanding his 2017 tax cuts to eliminating taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security benefits — could add $7.5 trillion to the nation’s debt for a year, according to the nonpartisan commission. responsible federal budget for a responsible federal budget .
Trump is pushing a plan to explicitly use revenue from higher tariffs on imported goods to help pay for expanding trillions of dollars in tax cuts, an unprecedented shift likely to face opposition from Republican budget hawks concerned about the reliability and sustainability of tariff revenue .
Days before he returned to office, some of his Republican allies in Congress warned that Trump’s aggressive tax could fall victim to signs of bond market concerns.
During a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, Republicans in the House of Representatives aired concerns that the estimated $4 trillion cost over the next 10 years of expanding the 2017 Trump tax cuts will cost the U.S. government wealth cuts to be $36 trillion in debt, which is growing at a rate of $2 trillion per year.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Diane Craft)