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Sam Stein wrote:
*****We’ve written repeatedly this year about the ridiculous budget gimmick at the heart of the Senate’s Big Beautiful Bill. Rather than count the 2017 Trump tax cuts as lapsing (as they are set to do), Republicans have proceeded as though they would continue indefinitely. They’re doing this because operating with “current policy” as a baseline significantly reduces the on-paper cost of their bill since they don’t have to account for the loss of revenue that comes with lowering people’s taxes if they pretend those expiring tax cuts were never going to expire. It’s an unprecedented move that the chamber reaffirmed by vote Monday morning.*****
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What is especially insidious about this is that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act itself came to enactment in December 2017 under reconciliation, the provisions of which required that the legislation not increase the deficit past a 10-year timeframe. Expiration of the tax cuts was obligatory for the legislation to pass, unhindered by the prospect of filibuster.
Now a nearly identical razor-thin majority is abusing its power to nullify the stricture only by adherence with which the previous legislation was able to pass by a razor-thin majority.
The information from the Tax Policy Center under the link below was updated in January 2024. That is, the TPC published it entirely without reference to the current machinations.
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*****Expiring provisions
To satisfy budget process requirements, lawmakers decided to sunset some provisions of the TCJA. Most cuts to individual income taxes, for example, expire at the end of 2025. Business expensing for new investment is also temporary. As conventionally scored, the act thus increased deficits from 2018 through 2026 and decreased them thereafter. If lawmakers decide to extend all the expiring provisions, however, that will add about $480 billion to deficits through 2027 and a growing amount thereafter.
Later decades
The TCJA was enacted under a process known as reconciliation. Among other things, reconciliation requires that a bill not increase the deficit beyond the 10-year budget window. At the time, JCT and CBO concluded that the act satisfied that requirement on a conventional scoring basis. Indeed, they found that the law reduced deficits starting in 2027. If TCJA’s expiring provisions are eventually made permanent, however, deficits will be persistently higher.
