The Patriot Post® · Leftists Renew Attacks on Trump Tax Cuts
The election of 2024 is less than five months away, and Republicans are making plans to shape the national agenda if they manage to hold onto power in Congress.
One agenda item is to extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Passed by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by President Donald Trump, the law lowered corporate taxes from 35% to 21%, as well as reduced individual tax rates across the board. Those individual rates will expire on December 31, 2025, but some Republicans are pledging to extend them when the new Congress convenes next year.
As one might imagine, that’s not sitting well with Democrats and their media mouthpieces. Any time there’s even a whisper about lowering taxes — or, in this case, just keeping them from going up — the Leftmedia propaganda machine churns out the tripe about “tax cuts for the rich” and vital services being cut.
Of course, it’s also the only time they ever pay attention to the national debt. For example, as The Washington Post warns, “GOP lawmakers and some of Trump’s economic advisers are considering more corporate tax breaks — which could expand the national debt by roughly $1 trillion over the next decade, according to researchers at Stanford University and MIT — arguing that they would improve the U.S.‘s global competitiveness.”
Funny, but we don’t remember the Post raising any concerns about the national debt, now at nearly $35 trillion, when their fellow Democrats were funneling $175 billion to Ukraine or when we needed to borrow money from China to pay for our own nation’s infrastructure.
Politicians are so irresponsible with our money that they can’t even keep their hands off entitlements like Social Security, which face insolvency not due to a lack of revenue but because of reckless spending.
Let’s face it. We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem. There’s more than enough money coming into Washington to pay for what we need — with or without the Trump tax cuts. But that’s not enough for Uncle Sam, who keeps the Fed’s printing presses going 24/7 while the debt clock keeps spinning.
The TCJA reduced taxes in every bracket, so it’s not just a benefit for the rich. Furthermore, workers, consumers, and shareholders pay corporate taxes — not faceless conglomerates. But it’s hard to win the battle of ideas when even those on our side worry that tax cuts might cost too much. (Tax cuts don’t “cost” anything. It’s the people’s money, not the government’s money. On the other hand, reckless spending costs a lot.)
Even if the GOP takes the reins in 2025, there’s no guarantee we’ll see an extension of the tax cuts. A Republican majority in either house of Congress will likely be slim, and there’s also likely to be infighting as populist elements in the GOP battle with Speaker Mike Johnson and others to be more aggressive on issues like taxes.
According to The Hill, “Some Republicans think the corporate rate may have been dropped too low and are open to hiking it back up, Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) recently said. Others say it should be dropped even lower as a way to attract more businesses and capital investment to the U.S.”
You know it will be an uphill battle when those who claim to be fighting for pro-growth and pro-taxpayer policies are lukewarm to the idea.
As National Review’s Noah Rothman adds, “The ideologically conservative Republican conference that passed the TCJA is long gone. It has been replaced in the intervening years by a GOP that is much more comfortable with economic planning and confiscatory tax policies designed to fund social engineering projects.”
If true, that’s unfortunate because there’s no doubt that tax cuts, both corporate and individual, benefit everyone except politicians who can’t keep their hands out of our pockets.
The Congressional Budget Office, which claims an extension of the 2017 tax cuts would add more than $4 trillion to the national debt, neglects to consider the broader and more complex benefits that would offset that number. House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX) and Ways and Means Chair Smith issued a statement last month reminding everyone about the benefits of the TCJA: “While the Congressional Budget Office provides a valuable service to the Congress, its track record in predicting the economic and fiscal outcome of the 2017 Trump tax cuts is poor to say the least.”
“The truth is,” they add, “the Trump tax cuts resulted in economic growth that was a full percentage point above CBO’s forecast, and federal revenues far outpaced the agency’s predictions. In fact, under Trump tax policies in 2022, tax revenues reached a record high of nearly $5 trillion, and revenues averaged $205 billion above CBO predictions for the four years following implementation of the law.”
As Election Day nears, look for more political smears from the Left about extending the tax cuts. They actually think less money in the pockets of working people is a good thing, and they’ll go to any lengths to convince taxpayers to pay more to a government that’s drunk on spending.
Let’s hope Republicans hold onto the House and take back the Senate on November 5. And let’s hope there’s enough political energy to extend the tax cuts and reduce federal spending. Only that combination can reduce our national debt and keep money in the hands of those who earn it.