Rep. Chip Roy said Tuesday that lawmakers pushing Senate Republicans’ tax plan are likely hoping to disguise the need for deep spending cuts through a technical sleight of hand.
“This is fairy dust, and they’re full of crap. And I’m gonna call them out on it,” said Roy (R-Texas), when asked about Senate Republicans’ plan to use a “current policy baseline,” which would treat the extension of Trump’s expiring 2017 tax cuts as costing nothing.
Roy added that he believes the baseline is being pushed so Senate Republicans don’t have to do the tricky math of coupling spending cuts with expensive tax cuts to minimize the deficit impacts of a party-line bill.
“There are people in this town, of course, who do not want to cut spending, who would love a policy baseline so they can go hide,” said Roy. “Give me the cuts, or you’re not getting your tax policy.”
The comments are the latest salvo by deficit hawks in the House against the Senate’s ideas for a legislation, which would deviate from the tax plan that House Republicans already passed in their budget.
The House bill laid out a $4.5 trillion upper limit on the costs of tax cuts. But Senate Republicans say that that plan would not allow for a permanent extension of the tax cuts from President Donald Trump’s first term.
The GOP also has to figure out how to include Trump’s ideas to eliminate taxes on tips and overtime work, among other things.
Senate Republicans used their closed-door lunch on Tuesday to discuss what they want, and what can get 51 votes, as part of a reconciliation bill, according to three senators in attendance. Republicans were not given a schedule for when they would take up the House budget resolution — instead talking about wanting to make the Trump tax cuts permanent and using that current policy baseline for the tax extension.
Pushing that baseline is a risky political gamble, though. Senate Republicans, for one thing, have not yet gotten a green light from the Senate’s independent legislative referee, known as the parliamentarian, that the maneuver would be permitted under the chamber’s budget reconciliation rules.
House Republicans have also warned that a significantly altered budget may not be able to pass the chamber again. House fiscal hawks reinforced that point with GOP leaders on Tuesday morning, according to two Republicans with direct knowledge of the conversations.
Roy isn’t the only fiscal hawk in the House who has voiced deep skepticism about the Senate’s tax accounting plan.
“Anyone that says current policy baseline is engaging in intellectual and economic fraud, because it’s intellectually lazy,” said Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), who has previously been critical of the idea, in a separate interview on Tuesday. “My basic mission in life is just to try to create some honest math.”
Click here to read the full story.
Back to News