The exorbitant cost of Trump's so-called 'tax cut' plan
Over the past decade, Washington has enacted President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), a bipartisan $1.7 trillion pandemic-response CARES Act and President Joe Biden’s $1.8 trillion American Rescue Plan. Yet the cost of the House-passed Republican tax cut will likely exceed all three of these expensive laws — combined.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) officially scores the GOP tax cuts included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as costing $3.8 trillion over the next decade. But the tab rises to $5.3 trillion when removing the deceptive expiration dates included to cover up the bill’s exorbitant long-term cost. Add in the additional tax savings added at the last minute to win more Republican votes, as well as the resulting interest costs, and the true 10-year tax cut cost likely approaches $6.5 trillion. The House bill would offset just $1.3 trillion with savings from programs such as Medicaid, SNAP and student loans — and the Senate is likely to strip many of those offsets.
The 2017 tax cuts were drafted against a backdrop of $585 billion annual budget deficits. Deficits have since tripled to $1.8 trillion, and Republicans have responded by passing the most expensive legislation since the 1960s. The combination of tax cuts, escalating Social Security and Medicare shortfalls and soaring interest costs will push annual deficits toward $4 trillion within a decade.
Rather than reduce this unfathomable cost, GOP leaders are trying to hide it from voters. To circumvent Congress’ anti-deficit rules, Senate Republicans have suggested simply deleting the CBO score of the TCJA renewals and writing in zero cost. They claim that those original TCJA expiration dates were never real anyway — even as the GOP dutifully adds expiration dates into the new legislation. House Republicans have been seen carrying talking points from Newt Gingrich attacking the CBO for acknowledging that tax relief adds to deficits.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/opinion-exorbitant-cost-trumps-called-100000139.html