No tax on tips? Lower corporate taxes? No tax on Social Security benefits?
The slew of tax cuts President-elect Donald J. Trump proposed in loosely defined slogans over the course of his victorious campaign will now face a fiscal reckoning in Washington. While Republicans are poised to control both chambers of Congress, opening a path for Mr. Trump’s plans, the party is now grappling with how far they can take another round of tax cuts.
Mr. Trump’s ambitions for a second term will ultimately have to compete with the signature accomplishment from his first: the giant tax package that Republicans passed and Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017. Large swaths of that tax cut expire at the end of next year, setting up an expensive debate that could overshadow Mr. Trump’s other goals.
“Nobody wants to acknowledge at all the sheer enormity of the challenge,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist. “There’s a reckoning coming.”
Unlike in 2016, when Mr. Trump’s victory surprised many in Washington, Republicans have spent months preparing for their return to power. They have been discussing using a fast-track budget process that skirts the supermajority requirement for legislation in the Senate, a tactic that would allow for a party-line passage of more tax cuts if Republicans ultimately keep control of the House.
But lawmakers and advisers to Mr. Trump are undecided about how much money they can commit to lowering the nation’s taxes again. The cost of just preserving the status quo is steep. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated that continuing all of the expiring provisions would cost roughly $4 trillion over a decade, and Mr. Trump’s campaign proposals could add trillions more to the debt.
In interviews before the election, some Republicans said the party would have to show some fiscal discipline.
“We can’t just have it be unlimited, whatever we want to it to be,” Senator James Lankford, a Republican of Oklahoma and member of the Finance Committee, said of the cost of a tax bill next year.
In financial markets, investors are preparing for higher deficits under a second Trump administration, selling bonds that could become less valuable if the government has to issue many more to finance a larger debt. Republicans and some advisers to Mr. Trump are already looking at ways to bring down the cost of his agenda.
For proposals like not taxing Social Security benefits, for example, Republicans could raise the income threshold for tax-free benefits, rather than eliminating the tax entirely, according to John Paulson, a billionaire hedge fund manager advising Mr. Trump on economic issues.
Mr. Paulson, a potential nominee for Treasury Secretary, said that several other of Mr. Trump’s proposed tax cuts — including not taxing tips or overtime, and restoring a deduction for state and local taxes — should also become narrower so they benefit fewer people and cost less money.
“You need to keep the concept of what he wants to achieve, and put guardrails around it so you achieve the goals, but lower the revenue impact,” Mr. Paulson said in an interview before the election. “And I have discussed that with members of his economic team, and they’re all cognizant of that.”
Beyond the cost, the policy goals of some of Mr. Trump’s campaign proposals, including creating a new deduction for interest on car loans, runs counter to traditional conservative ambitions of simplifying the tax code.
Mr. Trump and his team have put forward a number of ideas to offset the cost of his tax cuts. Those include rescinding tax credits for clean-energy projects passed under President Biden, as well as creating a commission run by the billionaire Elon Musk to find deep spending cuts.
But some of those plans could face skepticism from Republicans who favor programs that Mr. Trump has targeted for cuts. For instance, several Republicans have already pressed House Speaker Mike Johnson to move cautiously on repealing clean-energy subsidies, which they say benefit their districts.
Mr. Trump’s chief idea for raising federal revenue has been to impose steep tariffs on imported goods. Some advisers to Mr. Trump have presented those ideas as only a negotiating position, and they have also debated whether Mr. Trump can unilaterally impose such broad levies or if he will need the approval of Congress. Many Republicans on Capitol Hill oppose broad tariffs, meaning such a plan may not be able to become law.
“I’m also one who’s not anxious to budget around tariff revenues, and we need to be very careful not to pursue inflationary policies,” said Representative Adrian Smith, a Nebraska Republican and member of the House Ways and Means Committee.
Even if Mr. Trump does impose broad tariffs, though, it would likely not be enough to cover the cost of his other plans. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has estimated that Mr. Trump’s agenda, including higher tariffs, could add roughly $7.5 trillion to the debt over the next decade.
Adding to fiscal concerns is the unusually large size of the deficit, which stood at roughly $1.8 trillion last fiscal year. While Mr. Trump said little about the deficit during his campaign, Republicans have routinely criticized the gap between what America spends and what it earns through taxes and other revenue since President Biden took office.
Those concerns could factor into a looming debate over raising the nation’s debt limit, which caps the total amount of money that the federal government can borrow to fund its operations and pay its bills.
The debt ceiling, which was temporarily suspended after a bruising political fight last year, will come into place again on Jan. 2. That will give lawmakers a matter of months to raise the limit and avoid a potentially catastrophic default. Even among Republicans, that negotiation could inflame political concerns about the nation’s fiscal situation and create pressure to limit the size of another tax cut.
Republican lawmakers and some advisers to Mr. Trump argued that his tax agenda would spur more economic growth, which would generate more tax revenue. While studies have found that his first tax law did help jump-start some growth, the additional economic activity was not found to be enough to offset the cost of the tax cuts.
“There is an increasing concern among rating agencies and markets that the debt that we are building up is going to reach a point of being unsustainable,” said Shai Akabas, an economic policy analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “As that happens, the economic consequences will come into focus and may themselves put constraints on what policymakers will consider on tax cuts or spending increases.”
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