The nation urgently needs Congress to save the Trump tax cuts, but Republicans in Congress are going to need some fancy footwork to make that happen.
To get any budget items passed, GOP lawmakers — and President Donald Trump himself — will need to accept compromises.
Blame the math.
For starters, cementing votes will be a monster hurdle, since GOP control in each house is dangerously thin.
Equally problematic: If all the Trump tax cuts pass, revenue won’t cover spending — and the last thing Republicans will want to do is increase red ink.
Trump & Co. will have to jettison some of their pet tax rollbacks, or find more spending cuts.
As for corralling votes, consider: In the Senate, Republicans can bypass a Democratic filibuster (which requires 60 votes to break), but only if they confine their bill to budget issues.
And even so, they hold just 53 seats, so can’t lose more than three just to get a simple majority.
The House has no comparable filibuster, but with just a 218-215 edge, Republicans can lose just two votes — one, if Rep. Elise Stefanik (NY) quits to become UN ambassador and leaves her seat vacant.
And GOP hardliners have already proven they’ll make common cause with Democrats if they don’t get their way.
Dems, meanwhile, have threatened to block GOP budget bills they’re not happy with, even if it means shutting down the government.
No wonder House Republicans hope to dispense all their tax-and-spend issues in “one big, beautiful bill,” as Trump calls it: They fear they’ll only get one chance to muster a majority.
Yet that conflicts with the Senate’s preference: to pass one bill immediately, providing funds for defense and immigration, and another later to save Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which expire this year.
An even bigger problem: Making all of Trump’s tax cuts risks driving up an already astronomical deficit even more.
On Thursday, the key House committee passed an initial blueprint calling for a maximum $4.5 trillion in tax cuts — well short of what’s needed to cover all of Trump’s asks: i.e., tax-free tips, overtime and Social Security, raising the cap on the state- and local-tax deduction, etc.
GOPers added a provision to up that maximum under certain conditions, but something will still likely have to give.
And it can’t be the 2017 tax cuts, despite their potentially $3.9 trillion, 10-year price tag.
Those cuts fueled the economy until COVID hit in 2020, and helped rejuvenate it when the outbreak died down. Letting them expire could bring it crashing down.
Better to look at, say, giving up on not taxing Social Security benefits.
Low-income taxpayers pay little or no tax on Social Security anyway, so cutting this tax would help only wealthier adults. And do little for the economy, since the elderly spend less.
Another option: Leave the SALT cap at $10,000.
Raising it to, say, $100,000 would add $134 billion to the deficit, per the Wharton School of Finance.
Yet the primary beneficiaries would be blue states with recklessly high taxes.
Why subsidize that?
Even tax-free tips might also need to go, though it’s a key Trump promise: Certainly, to keep that vow, the prez will need to make some other tough choice.
To be sure, the more taxes Trump & Co. can get rid of, the better.
But they’ve got to do it without further bloating the deficit.
So Republicans have some brutal decisions to make.
For the sake of the economy, wish them luck.
