Nonpartisan scorekeeper: Trump’s tax cuts for the rich would not bring economic growth
Extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will add $4.6 trillion to the national debt but shrink the economy slightly in the long term.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that extending the expiring provisions of President Donald Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would shrink the economy and add $4.6 trillion to the national debt.
The law slashed tax rates for large corporations and wealthy individuals. While the corporate tax rate changes were permanent, most of the provisions relating to individuals are set to expire in 2025. Trump and many Republicans in Congress have vowed to extend those provisions and make them permanent.
“Republicans will make permanent the provisions of the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that doubled the standard deduction, expanded the Child Tax Credit, and spurred Economic Growth for all Americans,” the Republican National Committee said in its 2024 platform.
The CBO analysis released Dec. 4 said that allowing the expiring tax provisions to expire would result in “very small changes to gross domestic product,” due to a slight drop in the labor supply but an increase in private investment fueled by lower federal borrowing. By 2034, real GDP would actually increase, on net, by slightly less than 0.1% without the expiring portions of the law.
Trump ran in 2016 on promises to cut tax rates for the middle class by more than a third and to completely get rid of the national debt. Instead 10 million families saw their tax bills go up and the national debt increased by about $8 trillion in his first term.
“This nonpartisan analysis confirms the ugly truth: House Republicans are lying to push through another massive tax giveaway to billionaires and big corporations,” Pennsylvania U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in a Dec. 4 statement. “These tax cuts don’t pay for themselves—they never have, and they never will. Economists across the spectrum agree. Adding $4.6 trillion to the deficit isn’t just reckless—it’s a direct attack on the hardworking families Republicans claim to represent. They will use this skyrocketing debt as an excuse to slash vital programs that working people depend on—health care, housing, education—programs that provide stability and opportunity for millions of Americans.”
Pennsylvania Republican Sen.-elect Dave McCormick has endorsed making Trump’s tax law permanent and during the 2024 campaign attacked his Democratic opponent, incumbent Sen. Bob Casey, for not supporting the 2017 legislation.
In the current Congress, 105 House Republicans proposed the TCJA Permanency Act to make the individual tax rates permanent. These included Pennsylvania Reps. Mike Kelly, Dan Meuser, Scott Perry, Guy Reschenthaler, and Glenn Thompson. Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Kelly, Perry, Lloyd Smucker, and Thompson voted for a similar bill in 2018, which passed in the House and died in the Senate.
