Sheldon Whitehouse – COMMUNIST PARTY OF MAINE

_{^{Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference at the Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center on February 24, 2024 in National Harbor, Maryland | Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images}}

“We can’t afford 10 more years of giveaways to the wealthy and corporations and fail to invest in the people who drive our economy,” said the head of Groundwork Collaborative. “This tax law should expire.”

_{Reposted from Common Dreams}

As former U.S. President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans campaign on extending their 2017 tax cuts if elected in November, a government analysis revealed Wednesday that doing so would add $4.6 trillion to the national deficit.

When Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act during his first term, the initial estimated cost was $1.9 trillion. Last year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that extending policies set to expire next year would cost $3.5 trillion through 2033.

The new CBO report—sought by U.S. Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)—says continuing the income, business, and estate tax cuts will now cost $4.6 trillion through 2034.

“The Republican tax plan is to double down on Trump’s handouts to corporations and the wealthy, run the deficit into the stratosphere, and make it impossible to save Medicare and Social Security or help families with the cost of living in America.”

Responding in a statement Wednesday, the senators cited an Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) estimate that “extending the Trump tax cuts would create a $112.6 billion windfall for the top 5% of income earners in the first year alone.”

They also slammed their GOP colleagues, who Whitehouse said “are awfully eager to shield their megadonors from paying taxes.”

He recalled that just last year, “Republicans held our entire economy hostage,” refusing to raise the debt ceiling and risking the first-ever U.S. default, because they didn’t want the Internal Revenue Service to get more funding to “go after wealthy tax cheats.”

“Remember the Trump tax scam cutting taxes for billionaires and big corporations,” Whitehouse continued. “Now they’re set on extending those tax cuts, even though it would blow up the deficit. The Trump tax cuts were a gift to the ultrarich and a rotten deal for American families and small businesses. With their impending expiration, we have a chance to undo the damage, fix our corrupted tax code, and have big corporations and the ultrawealthy begin to pay their fair share.”

Wyden similarly took aim at the GOP, warning that “the Republican tax plan is to double down on Trump’s handouts to corporations and the wealthy, run the deficit into the stratosphere, and make it impossible to save Medicare and Social Security or help families with the cost of living in America.”

“Republicans have planned all along on making Trump’s tax handouts to the rich permanent, but they hid the true cost with timing gimmicks and a 2025 deadline that threatens the middle class with an automatic tax hike if they don’t get what they want,” he argued. “In short, they’re focused on helping the rich get richer, and everybody else can go pound sand. Democrats are going to stand by our commitment to protect the middle class while ensuring that corporations and the wealthy pay a fair share.”

Groundwork Collaborative executive director Lindsay Owens also responded critically to the CBO report, saying Wednesday that “extending Trump’s tax law and effectively subsidizing corporate profiteering and billionaire wealth is a nonstarter.”

“This tax law, on top of decades of failed trickle-down cuts, has come at the expense of workers and families,” Owens stressed. “We can’t afford 10 more years of giveaways to the wealthy and corporations and fail to invest in the people who drive our economy. This tax law should expire.”

While some of the tax cuts in the 2017 law are temporary—unless they get extended—the legislation permanently slashed the statutory corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. As Common Dreamsreported last week, a new ITEP analysis shows that tax rates paid by big and consistently profitable corporations dropped from 22% to 12.8% after the law’s enactment.

_{Jessica Corbett is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams}

_{^{U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse attends a hearing in the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington D.C. on December 5, 2023 | Photo: Celal Gunes/Anadolu via Getty Images}}

_{Reposted from Common Dreams}

“If not for the Bush tax cuts, their extensions, and then the Trump tax cuts, the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio would be declining indefinitely,” wrote Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.

The Democratic chair of the Senate Budget Committee rebuked his Republican colleagues on Thursday for demanding action to reduce the U.S. debt after adding roughly $10 trillion to it with tax cuts for the rich and large corporations.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) was responding to a letter he received earlier this week from Republican members of the budget committee, who criticized the chair for dedicating “significant time and attention to climate issues” while purportedly neglecting “the impending budgetary and fiscal crisis facing our nation.”

In a written reply, Whitehouse noted that “if not for the Bush tax cuts, their extensions, and then the Trump tax cuts, the U.S. debt-
to-GDP ratio would be declining indefinitely.”

The Bush administration’s decision to launch the so-called “war on terror”—which received bipartisan support in Congress—also cost the U.S. upwards of $8 trillion, Brown University’s Costs of War project has estimated.

Whitehouse described Republicans’ proposed solutions, such as their balanced budget plan , as “magical thinking,” pointing to the Congressional Budget Office’s recent conclusion that the GOP push to balance the federal budget within the next decade would not be possible without cuts to Social Security and Medicare—programs that are currently in the right-wing party’s crosshairs.

“That wild notion would zero out all other federal spending and still not completely eliminate the deficit,” Whitehouse wrote, observing that the GOP balanced budget plan would require the elimination of Medicaid, federal nutrition assistance, and other critical programs.

“Some billion-dollar corporations pay no income taxes at all. When you are willing to engage seriously with this problem, let me know.”

Whitehouse also defended his decision to focus a significant portion of the committee’s work on climate, arguing that “the next fiscal emergencies will be climate-related, and similarly disastrous for the federal budget, with cascading economy-wide ‘systemic risks.'”

The U.S. has faced at least 23 billion-dollar extreme weather disasters this year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee are currently investigating the climate-induced insurance crisis.

“We presented testimony from leading bankers, insurance CEOs, top corporate advisory firms, mortgage lenders, and scientists about these risks; you responded mostly with mockery, climate denial, and fringe witnesses on the fossil fuel payroll,” Whitehouse wrote Thursday.

The Democratic senator’s exchange with his GOP counterparts came as Republicans and some Democrats are demanding a “fiscal commission” to craft legislative changes to the nation’s trust fund programs, which the GOP has characterized as key contributors to the national debt. (Social Security is not a driver of federal deficits.)

Critics warn the fiscal commission would be a Trojan horse for Social Security and Medicare cuts.

Whitehouse and other congressional Democrats have proposed legislation that would extend Social Security’s solvency for more than 75 years by raising taxes on the wealthy. Republicans, for their part, have called for raising the retirement age while working to shield rich tax dodgers.

“As we all know, the tax system is corrupted by special interests, and million-dollar earners can pay lower tax rates than plumbers and firefighters,” Whitehouse wrote Thursday. “Some billion-dollar corporations pay no income taxes at all. When you are willing to engage seriously with this problem, let me know. There is a revenue side to the deficit problem, and we can correct injustices at the same time.”

_{Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams.}