U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Catherine Cortez Mastro (D-NV), Mark Warner (D-VA), Michael Bennet (D-CO), and Peter Welch (D-VT) want answers on how much extended tax cuts will cost.
In a letter to the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), the senators asked how the extension of President Donald Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was scored. The group questioned claims that extending the tax cuts would have no impact on the deficit, and called any suggestion that they would not have an impact “magic math.”
“The deficit cost of tax cuts is real, even for those who do not like the way the math works,” the group wrote. “After hardworking Americans paid their rent in December, they still had to budget for rent in January. Rent is not free because you paid last month’s rent.”
The senators said the TCJA provisions were set to expire in 2025 in an effort to keep the price tag of the proposed cuts below $1.5 trillion. According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the extension of the tax cuts for another decade would cost trillions and benefit only the wealthiest American taxpayers.
However, some Republican Senators have said the cost of extending the TCJA would be nothing. Some have suggested, the Democratic senator group said, that this year’s tax bill should be evaluated against a “current policy baseline” that assumes the expiring provisions will never expire and that any extensions of the previously temporary provisions would cost nothing.
The Democratic group asked the JCT to provide an understanding of whether it used a “current policy baseline” for official scoring on the Senator floor, among other questions.
The letter asks the JTC to answer by March 5. The Senate passed a spending bill on Feb. 20, and is expected to consider the tax cut extension legislation at a later date.