Taxes

Paul Ryan’s Permanent Tax Cuts Could Add $3.1 Trillion to the Deficit

Written by SK Ashby

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) recently estimated that Speaker Paul Ryan's bill to make all of their tax cuts permanent would add another $2.9 trillion to the deficit over 10 years when it takes effect, and that's a lot, but it may have been a slightly conservative estimate.

The Tax Policy Center estimates that it would actually add over $3.1 trillion to the federal deficit.

The second round of cuts would cost $631 billion before 2028 and an additional $3.15 trillion in the decade after that, according to the Tax Policy Center. The finding was somewhat larger than the $2.4 trillion cost over 10 years projected by the Tax Foundation, a conservative think-tank. [...]

TPC also found that the law would give a substantially bigger tax breaks to the richest families over those in the middle class. The richest 1 percent of filers would see an average tax cut of $40,000, while those in the middle 20 percent of earners would see an average cut of $980, TPC said.

A trillion here. A trillion there. Who's counting?

House Republicans are expected to vote on this at some point before the end of the month, but given that House Republicans just left town for a week of recess, I expect they won't vote on this until possibly the Friday the 28th.

The Washington Post reports that Senate Republicans have no plans to even consider this bill so it's definitely not going to become law.

With that said, I still think Democrats should attack House Republicans for passing this during the finals month of the midterm campaign wherever applicable. The GOP's original package tax cuts are extraordinarily unpopular; so unpopular they're not even campaigning on it.

You may have noticed that the tax cuts are rarely even discussed by Republicans at this point and that's their only major "accomplishment" of the past two years. From what I can tell, their entire midterm message is that they'll protect Trump from Democrats, deport more brown people, and finally kill Obamacare.