Congress

Republican tax law leaves experts searching for words

Published

1 year ago

July 21, 2025

As the tax world pores over Republicans’ tax cuts, one question keeps coming up: What are we calling this?

In a town that loves clever acronyms, tax pros are struggling to figure out how to talk about the new law, beginning with its name. The official title, at least before Democrats had it deleted from the legislation, is a mouthful: the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. And it’s a bit awkward with the word “act” following “bill.”

But there’s no consensus on what else to call it.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent likes “O Triple B.” Others are going with “OBBB” or “TOBBB” or “OBBBA” or “BBB.” “OB3” has been getting some traction, which bugs Libin Zhang, a tax lawyer at Fried Frank.

“’OB3’ is a bit misleading because the 3 should come before the B, like ‘O3B’,” he says. Zhang likes “OB-cubed.”

It’s not just the title that has experts tongue tied.

The legislation has an alphabet soup of provisions that are also scrambling the tax lexicon, simultaneously adding new terms and acronyms while deleting others — including GILTI, perhaps the most well-known piece of jargon to emerge from Republicans’ original 2017 tax cuts.

The Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income tax is a special levy Republicans imposed on business profits parked in overseas tax havens, and the acronym left little doubt about the dim view lawmakers took of the tactics.

But GILTI is being scotched by the new law, replaced by “Net CFC Tested Income” (NCTI) — which now has some test driving possible nicknames, including “necktie” and “neck tee.”

Others say they are sticking with GILTI regardless.

“The name GILTI is gone, although I think many of us will continue to refer to it as GILTI,” said EY’s Jason Yen, in a recent webinar on the legislation.

The struggle for words comes as experts try to wrap their heads around the legislation, signed into law a little more than two weeks ago. Much of the law was written in secret and didn’t get a lot of public vetting before passage, so the tax world is simultaneously trying to figure out what the bill does as well as what to call it.

The provision with the catchiest nickname — the “revenge tax,” a moniker some Republicans tax aides hated — didn’t make it into the final legislation. Lawmakers dropped that levy, designed to punish countries that implement a framework for taxing big multinational companies, after Bessent said it was no longer necessary, citing his negotiations with G7 nations that are part of the global pact.

At the same time, it remains to be seen whether Republicans’ decision to dub their new savings accounts for children “Trump accounts” will prove a marketing misstep that will blunt its appeal to the 75 million Americans who voted for Kamala Harris.

The overall legislation was christened by Trump, but the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” was scrubbed from the legislation once it got to the Senate, after Democratic leader Chuck Schumer had it struck as a violation of the chamber’s internal rules — the latest shot in a long-running feud in which the two parties take turns deleting the names of each other’s reconciliation bills.

“I just forced Republicans to delete their ridiculous bill name,” Schumer wrote shortly thereafter on X. “Nothing about this bill is beautiful.”

Technically the legislation is now called “An act to provide for reconciliation pursuant to title II of H. Con. Res. 14.”

Of course, that isn’t stopping many from still using the now-unofficial name. “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” was the winner in a recent EY survey of 10,000 tax pros asking how they referred to the tax law. “OB3” came in a close second. A similar survey by Grant Thornton also had those names going one-two.

Over at the Tax Policy Center, senior fellow Howard Gleckman prefers the colloquial “2025 budget act” or, simply, “the big budget bill.” The studiously nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, meanwhile, uses the extremely neutral “H.R. 1.”

Some of the individual provisions have been renamed to reflect substantive changes made by the legislation.

“GILTI” was made obsolete by Senate Republicans’ revisions to how multinationals will be taxed.

The original tax was intended to target profits from things like patents that businesses squirreled away in tax havens. Republicans had trouble coming up with a way of legally defining those earnings, so in the 2017 law they essentially said GILTI was everything except profits resulting from tangible assets like factories.

The idea was to distinguish between the money companies made from their actual operations abroad from things that were just accounting maneuvers. Naturally, the tangible stuff got its own acronym — QBAI, or Qualified Business Asset Investment.

But the new law dumps QBAI, and so the distinction made by GILTI no longer matters, leaving the tax world with “Net CFC Tested Income.”

Something similar is happening with FDII, or Foreign Derived Intangible Income, another provision that originated in 2017.

It’s a deduction for companies with overseas profits from intellectual property held in the U.S. — although it’s probably best known for inspiring a years-long dispute about whether it should be called “Fiddy” or “F-D-I-I.”

QBAI was part of the calculations that went into FDII, so, with QBAI now going away, FDII is also renamed in the new law, as the Foreign Derived Deduction Eligible Income, or FDDEI.

But if anything, it’s even less clear how to shorthand that.

Warren Payne, a former Republican tax aide now at the firm Mayer Brown, says he’s heard it called “Fa-Day” — though he’s not going there.

“I haven’t figured out how to pronounce it,” he said. “I just spell it out.”

Congress

Trump apparently shares Tom Cotton’s phone number in push to make Daylight Saving Time permanent

Published

1 day ago

October 3, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump appeared to share Sen. Tom Cotton’s phone number in a Saturday morning social media post imploring the Arkansas Republican to get behind a bill to make Daylight Saving Time permanent.

“Almost everybody wants “The Sunshine Protection Act” to pass, except for Tom Cotton,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “To the Great People of Arkansas, please let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.”

The president has spent months personally pushing Senate Republicans to end the practice that sees Americans change their clocks twice a year, cementing more sunlight hours in the evening for all twelve months of the calendar. Cotton, whom Trump called “a friend of mine” in the Saturday post, has long argued that making daylight saving time permanent would leave children, farmers and other early risers in the dark for hours on winter mornings.

One of Trump’s key selling points on Saturday: the PGA tour.

“The PGA TOUR, as an example, needs more Daylight in the afternoon in order to finish their Tournaments,” he said, attaching a letter from PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp endorsing the bill. ”Likewise, regular Golfers, Tennis Players, Hunters and, perhaps most importantly, Farmers who want more Daylight to play or work.

A Blue Light News call to the cellphone number went to voicemail. A spokesperson for Cotton did not respond to a request for comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The current version of the bill was introduced in the House in January 2025 by Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-Fla.), with Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) leading the Senate version. The legislation would make daylight saving time permanent across most of the country, ending the twice-yearly clock changes. The legislation has been stalled in the Senate since July.

The president encouraged supporters of the bill, dubbed the “The Sunshine Protection Act,” to call Cotton to “let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.”

During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, he publicly gave out the personal cellphone number of then-rival Sen. Lindsey Graham after the South Carolina Republican criticized him. Trump, who came to count on Graham as a reliable Senate ally after he won the presidency, revisited the moment during Graham’s funeral in July, acknowledging that sharing the number was something he “shouldn’t have done.”

Kelsey Brugger contributed to this report.

Congress

Sanders to rally for Troy Jackson in Maine

Published

2 days ago

October 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Sen. Bernie Sanders will hit the road for Troy Jackson in Maine starting Oct. 10, the first time the progressive leader will stump for the candidate this cycle.

The Vermont independent plans to hold three rallies with Jackson, according to an itinerary shared first with Blue Light News: first in Bangor on Oct. 10th followed by Lewiston and Biddeford on Oct. 11.

The Maine swing will kick off Sanders’ travel for the final stretch of the midterms, covering ground throughout October for House and Senate candidates, POLITICO reported.

“Bernie and Troy know that working people built this country and deserve a government that fights for them,” Jackson spokesperson Dan Gottlieb told Blue Light News. “Susan Collins has had nearly 30 years to deliver, and working Mainers are still getting squeezed while she serves the billionaires and corporate interests who bankroll her campaigns. Mainers don’t need another six years of excuses.”

Sanders campaigned ahead of major wins for progressives in the primary season, speaking at more than 60 rallies since last year’s Fight the Oligarchy tour and endorsing more than 90 candidates up and down the ballot.

He’s also opening his substantial $23 million campaign war chest, POLITICO reported, and contributing hundreds of thousands of dollars toMinnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan’s Senate campaign and others including Angie Nixon in Florida and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison,

Sanders will return to Maine after initially backing Graham Platner’s campaign for Senate. Allegations reported by POLITICO ultimately led him to call on the Democratic nominee to drop out of the race.

Sanders had not formally endorsed Jackson since he clinched the nomination from Platner, though he previously backed Jackson’s initial run for governor.

Congress

Hill: Trump’s ‘lack of favorability’ creating challenging politics

Published

2 days ago

October 2, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

House Financial Services Chair French Hill said he has “no concerns” about winning back his Arkansas seat in the upcoming midterm elections, but the six-term House member acknowledged the political headwinds for his party.

“I consider the atmosphere a very tough political environment right now because of President [Donald] Trump’s lack of favorability at the top, and you know people are concerned about, as I say, what it’s like to live under an inflated economy the last four years,” Hill said in an interview.

Hill is in a solidly red district, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, and said he is up against a “weaker candidate this time than I’ve had in past races.” Polling in the district, however, has shown a tighter race. The two polls done this year placed Democratic challenger Chris Jones ahead of Hill by a few percentage points. Any perceived polling victory for Jones is still well within the margin of error, and one of the polls had a Democratic sponsor.

Stephannie Lane Baker, a spokesperson for Jones, said that “of all the Republicans in Congress, the chairman of the Financial Services Committee doesn’t get to dodge responsibility for this economy. He’s in trouble, and he knows it.”

Additionally, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s PAC, Ready for the Fight, committed more than $1 million in television ads through the next five weeks for Jones’ race in Arkansas’s 2nd District, Jordan Abudayyeh, a spokesperson for the PAC confirmed. Overall Democratic spending on advertising for the race was just over $1 million, primarily made up by contributions from the Ready for the Fight PAC, with Republicans spending almost $2.7 million on ad buys, according to AdImpact, an advertising tracking service.

Hill said he has addressed affordability concerns “head on” this Congress.

“My work on housing, my work on the Price Stability Act, my work to try to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse, and drop the federal budget deficit as a percentage of GDP,” Hill said. “All these things can contribute to a more affordable environment for people. So I’ve tried to make that a forefront of my campaign this year.”

Hill was a key architect of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, a bipartisan housing affordability bill that became law in July. The Price Stability Act, which is unlikely to become law this year, would narrow the Federal Reserve’s current dual mandate of pursuing maximum employment and price stability to focus exclusively on containing inflation.