Trump and GOP Eye Ambitious 100-day Agenda Starting with Renewing Tax Cuts

Republican lawmakers are planning an ambitious 100-day agenda with President-elect Donald Trump in the White House and GOP lawmakers in a congressional majority to accomplish their policy goals.

This from newsmax.com.

After meeting recently with GOP colleagues to map out the road ahead, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) said:

What we’re focused on right now is being ready, Day 1.

The discussions will test whether Trump and his Republican allies can achieve the kinds of real-world outcomes wanted, needed, and supported when voters gave the party control of both Houses of Congress and the White House. We the People can anticipate President Trump to address three issues:

 – America’s priorities,

 – [G]aping income inequities, and

 – [T]he proper size and scope of government.

We can expect the newly-minted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to address America’s priorities by streamlining federal operations, reducing wasteful spending, and eliminating bureaucratic inefficiencies.

Next, in the face of mounting federal deficits—now approaching $2 trillion a year—the policies emerging will revive long-running debates. Atop the list is the plan to renew some $4 trillion in expiring GOP tax cuts—a signature domestic achievement of Trump’s first term and an issue that may define his return to the White House.

Recalling the 2017 tax debate, Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, said:

The past is really prologue here.

NOTE: President Trump learned from his first term. Period. And then he had that “Pause” of four years when many believe he was still our Commander in Chief while the Obiden fuster cluck proceeded to demonstrate—for all to see—their globalist intentions for America. As bad as it was, actually the radical liberal expose’ was a valuable learning experience for ALL Americans.

Trump intends to avoid the pitfalls—like the result of his first-term campaign promise to “repeal and replace” Obama’s health care law which failed as a result of the now-famous thumbs-down vote by then-Sen. John McCain (RINO-AZ).

Thankfully, the GOP majority in Congress quickly pivoted to tax cuts, assembling and approving the multitrillion-dollar package by year’s end.

Owens explained:

The big economic story in the U.S. is soaring income equality. And that is actually, interestingly, a tax story.

In preparation for Trump’s return, Republicans in Congress have been meeting privately for months and with the president-elect to go over proposals to extend and enhance those tax breaks, some of which would otherwise expire in 2025.

That means keeping in place various tax brackets and a standardized deduction for individual earners, along with the existing rates for so-called pass-through entities such as law firms, doctors’ offices, or businesses that take their earnings as individual income.

Typically, the price tag for the tax cuts would be prohibitive—the Congressional Budget Office estimates that keeping the expiring provisions in place would add some $4 trillion to deficits over a decade.

Adding to that, Trump wants to include his own priorities in the tax package, including lowering the corporate rate, now at 21% from the 2017 law, to 15%, and doing away with individual taxes on tips and overtime pay.

However, Avik Roy, president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, said:

[B]laming the tax cuts for the nation’s income inequality is just nonsense because tax filers up and down the income ladder benefited.

He instead points to other factors, including the Federal Reserve’s historically low interest rates that enable borrowing—including for the wealthy—on the cheap.

Roy explained:

Americans don’t care if Elon Musk is rich. What they care about is, ‘What are you doing to make [our] lives better?’

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) the incoming chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said on Fox News:

If you’re just extending current law, we’re not raising taxes or lowering taxes.

Further:

[T]he criticism that tax cuts would add to the deficit is ridiculous.

And:

There is a difference between taxes and spending, and we just have to get that message out to America.

Addressing the final bullet, based on the president-elect’s promises, we can anticipate DOGE to approach the size and scope of government with the delicacy of a brain surgeon using a meat cleaver and a chain saw. There will be lots of blood and there will be miraculous results.

The new Congress, too, will be considering spending reductions, for example, the food stamps and health care programs—goals long sought by conservatives as part of the annual appropriations process.

One cut is almost certain to fall on the COVID-19-era subsidy that helps defray the cost of health insurance for people who buy their own policies via the Affordable Care Act exchange.

The extra health care subsidies also include various green energy tax breaks that Republicans want to roll back.

Republicans are planning to use a budgetary process, called reconciliation, that allows majority passage in Congress, essentially along party lines, without the threat of a filibuster in the Senate that can stall out a bill’s advance unless 60 of the 100 senators agree.

It is the same process the communists/globalists used when they had the power in Washington to approve two large attacks on We the People against GOP objections:

– [T]he Inflation Reduction Act, and

– Obama’s health care law, over GOP objections.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has been working closely with President Trump on the agenda, and has promised a “breakneck” pace in the first 100 days “because we have a lot to fix.”

Final thoughts: Republicans have been here before with President Trump and control of Congress—goals and plans are a great start but the resistance from the Left must be overcome. And a worse-case scenario will give the GOP only two years control of both Houses.