The GOP’s tax bill is built on gimmicks, experts said.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t real benefits and costs, but the bill was written to game Congress’s budget rules, making the legislation lawmakers hope to pass Tuesday only a moderate approximation of what will likely happen.
“This bill is a particularly distasteful example of legislative sausage-making,” said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a leading budget watchdog who called the 694-page deal, released late Friday, a “disingenuous combination of gimmicks and debt.”
While many bills play budget games, the analysts said the GOP’s latest effort is a stunning example, using a combination of delays, early cut-offs and phaseouts. Beginning some tax cuts later, and ending some early, means they end up costing the government less over the 10-year budget window.
For example, the individual tax rate cuts go into effect next year, but expire after 2025. Without that, the bill would have cost $315 billion more, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget calculated, blasting through the budget limit.
Businesses’ tax break of full expensing for new capital purchases goes away in 2022 under the bill — a gimmick saving the government as much as $80 billion, the CRFB said.
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Combined, the gimmicks total as much as $725 billion, or about half the current price tag. If the gimmicks were dropped, the bill’s “real” cost would be as much as $2.2 trillion. Add in interest payments and that’s $2.5 trillion, the CRFB said.
Republicans brushed off complaints about the gimmicks, saying they consider them opportunities rather than hurdles. House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady, Congress’s chief tax-law writer, said Congress should try to make sure none of the tax breaks are allowed to expire.
The Texas Republican said taxpayers deserve that kind of “certainty.”
“My thinking is: Look, we’ve just finished eight years with Washington spending your money. How about we try eight years of you spending your money, and then a future Congress will decide which one works best for the country,” he said.
Living with the gimmicks, though, complicates the Republican sales pitch moving forward.
By eliminating the individual tax cuts in 2025, Republicans’ bill looks like it means an actual tax increase on the majority of Americans by 2027.
The Tax Policy Center, a center-left think tank, said 53 percent of Americans will pay more in a decade because of the gimmick.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said that amounts to 86 million taxpayers who would see an actual tax hike in 2027.
“The final draft of the GOP tax scam is the most shameless and brazen theft of them all,” she said.
Budget analysts said the number of gimmicks included in the bill virtually ensures that Congress will have to come back and revisit the legislation soon.
Meanwhile Democrats are already vowing a repeal should they win control of Congress, saying the tax cuts will sap the government of money it needs.
• David Sherfinski contributed to this article.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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