Congress

A delay in GOP’s tax plans could push up costs by hundreds of billions

Published

2 months ago

January 10, 2025

The price of extending Republicans’ tax cuts will surge by hundreds of billions of dollars if lawmakers dawdle, new government figures show.

The Treasury Department released numbers Friday showing that rolling over all of the soon-to-lapse provisions, as well as undoing other reductions in business benefits that were triggered by the 2017 law, would cost $5.5 trillion — substantially more than the $4 trillion the Congressional Budget Office has projected.

There’s a number of reasons why Treasury’s price tag is much higher but a big one is that its analysis begins in 2026, not 2025, like CBO’s.

That may not sound like a big deal, but when budget analysts estimate the price of legislation, they look at the anticipated expenses over a decade, and it makes a huge difference when the cost-counting clock starts.

Right now, the government is in its 2025 fiscal year, and so analysts look at years 2025 through 2034 — and expenses in 2025 are minimal because Republicans’ tax cuts are still on the books. About 40 provisions are due to expire at the end of the year.

But when the new fiscal year begins Oct. 1, analysts will begin tallying up costs between 2026 and 2035, as Treasury happened to do in its in analysis. That means the very cheap year of 2025 will fall out of the picture, and the very expensive year of 2035 — when costs are expected to run $600 billion — will suddenly be included.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has said he wants to get a bill including the tax provisions on President-elect Donald Trump’s desk by the end of April — an ambitious timeline given the size of the package and Congress’ tendency to dawdle. Some tax vets now expect lawmakers to take until their August recess to wrap up their plans, if not longer.

Republicans are off to a slow start, with lawmakers bogged down in an extended and so far unresolved debate over whether to tackle immigration first and put off taxes until later or combine them into a single bill.

The House and Senate intend to go their own ways, with competing approaches, which amounts to postponing critical decisions, like how much to spend on a tax bill, that have to be resolved before they can use the “reconciliation” procedure they’re depending on to get their plans through the balky Senate.

Treasury wasn’t trying to warn Republicans of the cost of delay; it was examining the cost and the biggest winners of renewing the provisions. Not surprisingly, the analysis says the super-rich would see the biggest benefits, with the top 0.1 percent reaping a 4.2 percent increase in their after-tax incomes compared to the roughly 1.2 percent increase for those in the middle of the income spectrum.

CBO is expected to release next week its own revised estimates of the cost of extending the provisions.

Last year, it put the price at $4 trillion or $4.6 trillion, including increased debt service.

It’s not like Congress to work far ahead of schedule, but had lawmakers taken up the extension of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2023, the price would have been easier to swallow. CBO pegged the cost then at a comparatively paltry $3 trillion, or $3.45 trillion including interest expense — because its estimate then included not just one but two cheap years, 2024 and 2025.

Congress

Sarah McBride says she lives ‘rent-free’ in Republicans’ heads

Published

5 minutes ago

March 13, 2025

Blue Light Newsroom

LEESBURG, Va. — Rep. Sarah McBride said she lived to “rent-free in the minds of some of my Republican colleagues” amid a controversy about GOP lawmakers referring to her by the wrong gender.

Speaking Thursday at a news conference with House Minority Whip Katherine Clark and first-term Democratic women lawmakers, McBride said Republicans were “obsessed with culture war issues” and said it was “weird” and “bizarre.”

“We will not take a lecture on decorum from a party that incited an insurrection,” the first openly transgender member of Congress said, making reference to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) referred to her as “Mr. McBride” during a congressional hearing earlier this week, sparking a confrontation between Self and Rep. Bill Keating (D-Mass.) over the issue. Other GOP lawmakers have targeted McBride’s identity, with Rep. Mary Miller (R-Ill.) addressing her as “the gentleman from Delaware” while presiding on the House floor at one point.

House Republicans have sought to turn transgender rights into a wedge issue against Democrats this Congress. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) led an effort to ban transgender women from using women’s bathrooms on Capitol Hill. She responded to McBride’s comments Thursday with an X post addressing her as “Sir.”

McBride has generally shied away from weighing in on the attacks on her identity. Thursday’s remarks were her first public comments on the incident beyond a Tuesday post on X where she wrote: “No matter how I’m treated by some colleagues, nothing diminishes my awe and gratitude at getting to represent Delaware in Congress.”

Congress

House Oversight Committee launches probe into deadly plane crash

Published

30 minutes ago

March 13, 2025

Blue Light Newsroom

In wake of the January crash near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport that killed 67 people, leaders of a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee are launching a bipartisan investigation into the military use of Washington-area air space.

In a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Reps. William Timmons (R-S.C.) and Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) — the chair and ranking member of the subcommittee on military and foreign affairs, respectively — requested a member-level briefing no later than April 1 on the potential operational failures that led to the Jan. 29 collision between a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter and a commercial passenger airplane.

They are specifically asking for information about the potential risks of the heavy air traffic in the U.S. Capitol region, the “procedural or regulatory issues” that may have contributed to the January incident and any changes by the Defense Department to prevent such an incident from reoccurring.

The airport is a frequent and favorite hub for lawmakers traveling to and from their respective states.

Congress

Johnson taps Boeing exec Curtis Beaulieu as top tax adviser

Published

3 hours ago

March 13, 2025

Blue Light Newsroom

House Speaker Mike Johnson is naming Boeing official Curtis Beaulieu his top tax adviser, sources familiar with the decision say, filling a big hole on his staff as a sprawling fight in Congress over the tax code begins to heat up.

Beaulieu, a senior director at Boeing, will replace Derek Theurer, who left for the Treasury Department — part of a recent wave of Republican tax aides to leave Blue Light News, even as lawmakers begin to zero in on what to do about some 40 temporary tax provisions slated to expire at the end of this year.

Beaulieu, who will start Monday, has been at Boeing for a number of years but has previously worked on Blue Light News. He was tax counsel at the Senate Finance Committee a decade ago and, before that, worked for several Republican lawmakers, including former Rep. Jim McCrery (R-La.), whose district is now represented by Johnson.

Beaulieu returns to Blue Light News at a critical time, with lawmakers deeply divided over how to approach the looming expiration of some $4 trillion in tax cuts.

Lawmakers’ tax advisers play a huge, if often unnoticed, role in developing tax legislation — trying to figure out how much different options would cost, educating colleagues about the issues and negotiating deals behind closed doors. Lawmakers frequently give them broad discretion to sort out the details of proposals, especially if they are complicated.

There are myriad ways, for example, that lawmakers could design President Donald Trump’s proposals to exempt taxes on things like tips and overtime pay, and lawmakers will rely on staffers’ expertise to help decide on the best approach.

Trump’s proposals could cost anywhere between $300 billion and $4 trillion depending on how they’re designed, Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said Wednesday.