Republicans hope to make the tax-rate changes passed under former President Donald Trump permanent if the GOP takes control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections.
"The trick is to put the president in a position of either getting defeated in 2024 or signing your stuff into law," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who remains in communication with senior party leaders, told The Washington Post. "Republicans will make it a priority to continue the Trump tax cuts, because it puts the Democrats in a position of being for tax increases and against economic growth."
Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Neb., said recently: "We have temporary tax policies that have been good for the middle class — we need to make those permanent."
White House spokesman Andrew Bates pushed back on this idea, saying in a statement: "While President [Joe] Biden and congressional Democrats are fighting to make middle class families the heart of our economy … Republicans want to sell those families out to rich special interests and by doubling down on their 2017 tax giveaway to the ultrawealthy and corporations."
Stephen Moore, former White House economic adviser during the Trump administration, told the Post that "It'll be a battle royale in Washington over the next year over which of Trump's tax cuts get extended. This will be a central, driving theme of the Republican Congress — making those tax cuts permanent."
Jason Furman, an economist who served in the Obama administration and now teaches at Harvard University, told the Post that "the corporate tax cuts the Republicans are pushing would add to inflation, add to the deficit, and do little or nothing for economic growth.
"They were a budget gimmick to start with. Extending them without paying for them now would be doubling down on the original gimmick."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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