Republicans consider major budget change to obscure deficit impact of extending Trump's tax cuts
WASHINGTON — Republicans are considering a far-reaching change to the budget process that would obscure the deficit impact of extending President Donald Trump’s multitrillion-dollar tax cuts in order to avoid paying for them.
WASHINGTON — Republicans are considering a far-reaching change to the budget process that would obscure the deficit impact of extending President Donald Trump’s multitrillion-dollar tax cuts in order to avoid paying for them.
It comes as part of a massive bill to advance Trump’s agenda that Republicans are seeking to pass on a party-line basis. If the tactic is successful, it would upend long-standing precedent and change the accounting process for current and future lawmakers, with major policy stakes.
Extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Trump signed into law in 2017, would cost $4.6 trillion over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the official nonpartisan scorekeeper.
That’s under the “current law” metric that has traditionally been used, as the tax cuts are slated to expire at the end of this year. But Senate Republicans want to use a different scoring method called the “current policy” baseline, which would assume that extending tax cuts costs $0 because they’re already law.
The chair of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, endorsed the “current policy” approach, telling reporters that it “recognizes that extending current law does not change the tax policy, does not reduce tax revenue.”
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