{"id":6029,"date":"2025-02-11T17:49:20","date_gmt":"2025-02-11T17:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/house-freedom-caucus-plans-to-throw-another-tax-plan-into-the-mix\/"},"modified":"2025-02-11T17:49:20","modified_gmt":"2025-02-11T17:49:20","slug":"house-freedom-caucus-plans-to-throw-another-tax-plan-into-the-mix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/house-freedom-caucus-plans-to-throw-another-tax-plan-into-the-mix\/","title":{"rendered":"House Freedom Caucus plans to throw another tax plan into the mix"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris <\/a>(R-Md.) said Tuesday that the group would be releasing its own plan this week for achieving President Donald Trump\u2019s tax priorities.<\/p>\n

The plan, which the hard-right HFC wants to take up after a separate bill addressing border and defense initiatives, is a new speed bump in Speaker Mike Johnson<\/a>‘s effort to unite fractious House Republicans around leadership\u2019s own plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big tax bill is what we\u2019re going to propose in our second step, and it\u2019s going to be coupled with enough deficit reduction to make sure that the financial markets realize we\u2019re serious about deficit reduction,\u201d said Harris.<\/p>\n

He cautioned that they wouldn\u2019t necessarily be including all of Trump’s ideas, \u201cbecause it\u2019s unclear the president prioritizes all of them, but the ones that the president wants, plus the extension of the tax cuts, especially the ones that would result in economic growth.\u201d <\/p>\n

House leaders are scrambling to get GOP lawmakers to coalesce around their own plan for a single bill that would include border, energy and tax policies. The Freedom Caucus openly defied leadership by releasing its own plan focused on border and defense on Monday. <\/p>\n

Harris’ announcement that the caucus would subsequently release a tax plan is similarly a snub to House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith<\/a> (R-Mo.), who as head of the tax-writing committee is responsible for compiling Trump’s tax priorities.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, GOP leaders indicated Tuesday morning that their plan could be taken up by the House Budget Committee as soon as Thursday, though significant questions remain about the tax portion of the sweeping agenda.<\/p>\n

Specifically, lawmakers expect that Johnson\u2019s new draft plan, outlined by POLITICO on Monday<\/a>, will include a budget reconciliation instruction for Ways and Means that would dip below $4.7 trillion in deficit spending. That would barely give the committee enough breathing room to extend all the 2017 Trump tax cuts that are expiring at the end of this year, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cost around $4.6 trillion \u2014 let alone Trump\u2019s other tax priorities.<\/p>\n

The House Freedom Caucus plan would include an instruction for Ways and Means that would range between $5 to $5.5 trillion. However, it\u2019s unclear if the spending cuts the group includes in its plan to offset the tax policies\u2019 impact on the deficit would be acceptable to the rest of the conference.<\/p>\n

Harris said he hopes to file a complete budget blueprint within the next two weeks, which would call for an extension of the expiring tax cuts and Trump\u2019s other ideas to eliminate taxes on tips and overtime pay.<\/p>\n

The GOP agenda needs to include \u201creal deficit reduction,\u201d Harris said, coupled with economic growth assumptions for the tax cuts that aren\u2019t \u201cunrealistic.\u201d Republican leaders argue that their tax plans will stimulate economic growth that would offset a portion of the cost, though fiscal hawks want to be conservative with those estimates.<\/p>\n

House Freedom Caucus member Ralph Norman<\/a> (R-S.C.) added that while the extension of Trump tax cuts would be permanent under the group’s plan, some proposals like ending the federal income tax on tips would likely need to be shorter-term to pare back the cost of the bill. <\/p>\n

Pressure is mounting on House GOP leaders to get their agenda together as Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham<\/a> (R-S.C.) prepares to mark-up the Senate\u2019s plan on Wednesday. That bill would not include any of Trump\u2019s tax agenda, saving that for a second measure later in the year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe question is, if they can\u2019t come up to a resolution quickly, then again the House Freedom Caucus feels that they should do what the Senate is doing, pass a much smaller bill, get the president the border funds and some of the defense funds that he needs to secure the nation,\u201d Harris said.<\/p>\n

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) said Tuesday that the group would be releasing its own plan this week for achieving President Donald Trump\u2019s tax priorities. The plan, which the hard-right HFC wants to take up after a separate bill addressing border and defense initiatives, is a new speed bump in Speaker Mike Johnson‘s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}