GOP deficit hawks fear tax plan is secret budget-buster
Key Senate Republicans worry tax cuts slated to expire will eventually be extended — boosting the true cost of the bill.
By SEUNG MIN KIM 11/24/2017 07:42 AM EST
The GOP has yet to resolve an internal clash over whether expiring tax cuts will really expire, potentially threatening the party’s push for a desperately-needed legislative achievement.
On one side are the White House and top congressional Republicans, who argue that ultimately all the tax cuts in their plan will be extended, even the ones slated to lapse. But that’s exactly what the party’s small, but mighty, bloc of deficit hawks is afraid of.
And as the Senate steams toward a vote next week on its massive tax overhaul, the fight over the bill’s true sticker price may be the deciding factor for the bill.
It was bad enough, in the deficit hawks’ view, that key provisions in the House bill expire in five years and that lawmakers already assume they’ll get extended. But their concerns multiplied after the revised Senate GOP tax plan proposed winding down a host of popular tax cuts for individuals after 2025. The tax cuts were made temporary to trim the official cost of the bill, but deficit hawks fear Congress will simply extend them — further adding to the government’s red ink.
“The savings, the score, it just isn’t valid because you know that they’re not going to follow through,” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), an avowed fiscal conservative, said in a recent interview. “You can’t assume that we’ll grow a backbone later. If we can’t do it now, then it’s tough to do it later.”
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https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/24/republicans-tax-reform-plan-deficit-cost-257604
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