No one likes doing chores, but they don’t magically go away by ignoring them. If you don’t mow your lawn, the grass doesn’t stop growing. It becomes jungle-like; a much bigger headache if you don’t take care of it when you were supposed to. And, worst of all, even when you do your chores, you’ll have to do them again soon, over and over again. Death, taxes and chores. Wouldn’t it be nice to instead live in a world where if you just did them once, you’d be set forever? Republicans in Congress are pretending they live in that world. But instead of skipping household chores, they want to skip the part of governing where they have to pay for their plans.
Republicans are pushing tax cuts that would balloon America’s debt by $4.6 trillion over the next decade in order to funnel money back to the wealthy. When you combine their proposed tax cuts with their cuts to social programs and the poorest 20% of Americans would lose $1,125 per year while the top 0.1% would gain $180,910. They, of course, know this proposal that President Trump has branded “one big, beautiful bill” is unpopular for many reasons, so they’re trying to fudge the numbers.
There are two pieces to this. Let’s start with the first: the way Senate Republicans are trying to pass this law, a process known as “budget reconciliation.”
For legislation to get through the Senate, it normally needs 60 votes, otherwise, a single senator can block it with a filibuster. In 1974, though, Congress conjured up the budget reconciliation process, which allows the Senate to pass legislation that meets certain rules with only 51 votes—a simple majority. Today’s congressional gridlock and partisanship make it rare for a bipartisan group of 60 senators to agree to anything, let alone a spending bill. That’s why senators from both parties rely on budget reconciliation to pass major legislation, like the American Rescue Plan, the Inflation Reduction Act and tax cuts.
There are three key rules a bill needs to qualify for budget reconciliation. First, Congress can only use the budget reconciliation process once per fiscal year—you get one bite at the apple.
Second, under the “Byrd Rule” (named after former Senator Robert Byrd), legislation cannot increase the deficit after ten years. That’s why Congress designs many of its policies to “sunset,” or phase out over ten years.
And, third, any policy passed through budget reconciliation must directly affect federal spending, revenue, or the debt limit. Historically, the nonpartisan Senate “parliamentarian” has played a role in determining whether budget reconciliation bills stay within the rules. For example, much to the chagrin of many Democrats, the parliamentarian ruled during the Biden administration that raising the minimum wage and implementing certain immigration reforms did not qualify.
This brings us to the next part: an accounting gimmick.
A bit of background: President Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—passed via reconciliation—cut individuals’ income tax rates, slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and doubled the standard deduction taxpayers can claim on their refunds. But to follow the strict rules of budget reconciliation, Congress had to let key provisions expire, most notably the reduction of individual income tax rates.
Now, Republicans want to extend the Trump tax cuts, but they don’t want to be held accountable for an expensive bill nor do they want to just pass another set of cuts that will sunset again. To bypass these challenges, they’re trying to game how the bill is “scored”—or how Congress estimates the cost of policies. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office scores bills using a “current law baseline.” Essentially, it calculates what would happen to the country’s deficit and debt if a law passes, compared to a world in which the law does not pass. It’s a simple, intuitive and fair method.
The problem facing Republicans is that the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation concluded that their bill would add $4.6 trillion to the debt. Fearing Americans will get a sticker shock, Republicans decided to change the scoring rules and use a “current policy baseline” instead. Under this method, they could score their bill by pretending that none of today’s laws—like the Trump tax cuts—will ever expire. By doing so, extending any of today’s laws will appear free.
What they’re arguing is simple enough: they mowed their lawn once already, why do they have to do it again? It’s a question many a child asks. Unfortunately, the stakes of this are far greater than a petulant child refusing to do their chores. That growing grass is our country’s debt; if they don’t deal with it now, it’ll be left a mess for future generations to clean up.
What’s more, by pulling this accounting trick, Republicans think they can also make the tax cuts permanent. You’ll remember that the rules of budget reconciliation demand that legislation does not increase the deficit after ten years. By pretending that the 2017 tax cuts are already permanent, Republicans can further pretend that passing this new law won’t change the deficit. Senator Lindsay Graham, the chairman of the Budget Committee, states it openly: “I have determined that current policy will be the budget base line regarding taxation. This will allow the tax cuts to be permanent.”
You might be asking, “Didn’t you say the parliamentarian makes those calls?” Historically, that has been the case. But over the weekend, Senate Republicans sidestepped the parliamentarian to jam through their budget blueprint, the first procedural step in passing the tax plan. They’re threatening to keep her sidelined throughout the legislative process so that Senate Republicans can interpret Senate rules in whichever way they see fit. Now when you strip away the procedures and the calculations, it’s clear what’s happening: Senate Republicans are pushing through a tax cut for the wealthy that will blow up the country’s debt. It’s not too hard to see because it’s part of a pattern. Since the turn of the century, tax cuts are responsible for 57% of the increase in the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio, a measure economists rely upon to see if our debt burden is becoming unmanageable. What’s more, if you strip out the one-time emergency spending Congress did to respond to the Great Recession and COVID-19, tax cuts are responsible for 90% of the increase in the debt-to-GDP ratio.
The difference this time is that to pass these tax cuts, Senate Republicans took unprecedented steps to violate the Senate’s own procedures. They think they have the political cover to do so because today’s newscycle is dominated by President Trump’s tariffs and their cataclysmic effects on markets rather than arcane topics like legislative processes and budget scoring.
And they feel they have do it this way because they know how things are starting to look. They claim to be the party of fiscal conservatism and their leaders bemoan the national debt, but this plan blows up the debt. They ran on lowering costs, but the Trump tariffs reignite inflation. They have adopted the mantle of working class champions, but they’ve designed a plan to benefit the wealthy and hurt the poor. It’s no surprise why they are trying to hide from their responsibilities.
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