President Donald Trump is not exactly known for being detail-oriented. As a candidate, he rattled off a slew of big promises during his rallies, talking up an ever-growing buffet of tax relief to his supporters. Taxes on tips? Consider them gone. Taxes on overtime? Out of here. And the tax cuts that Republicans passed in 2017 during his first term? He’d make them permanent before they expire at the start of 2026.
The problem is that (as per his idiom) Trump has managed to write a bunch of checks that he can’t cash on his own.
The problem is that (as per his idiom) Trump has managed to write a bunch of checks that he can’t cash on his own. It falls to congressional Republicans to make his dreams a reality — and they’re running up against stumbling block after stumbling block in the process. Even as Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., attempts to wrangle his caucus into shape, Trump is doing little to help.If anything, as evidenced by the roller coaster ride that he engineered for his party on Friday, the president has been more of a carnival barker than a ringmaster for this legislative session, promising big results but offering little leadership. Even after the House Ways and Means Committee released the first preview of its plan on Friday night, it was still unclear what the final bill will look like or how much of the package Trump might ultimately sign off on.
In theory, the equation facing the House GOP is a simple one: cut federal spending on one side to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy on the other. It’s the same hymnal they’ve been singing from for almost as long as I’ve been alive. But, as ever, the devil is in the details for legislators trying to thread the political needle between delivering on promises to rein in spending and not wrecking their constituents in the process.
Johnson finds himself trying to please multiple camps at once, none of which seems particularly willing to compromise, given the leverage that Republicans’ thin majority grants to even small factions. A group of more than 30 fiscal hawks has warned GOP leadership that they won’t support a bill that adds to the federal deficit. Meanwhile, Republicans from districts in blue states have dug in their heels to lift the cap on federal deductions for state and local taxes included in the 2017 tax bill. And another group of GOP lawmakers wants to keep the clean energy credits the Biden administration championed that other colleagues consider a necessary sacrifice to pay for other tax cuts.Johnson has already said he’s going to shrink the tax side of the bill, reducing the goal to $4 trillion in tax cuts over the next 10 years, down from a previous target of $4.5 trillion. The issue is that even that smaller number will be tough to hit, considering the difficulty of finding votes to gut Medicaid and to shift the costs of the supplemental food assistance program, or SNAP, to the states. In the partial version of his committee’s bill released Friday night, House Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith, R-Mo., outright ignored most of the unresolved tensions among his caucus. (Any one of those remaining issues could be the one that causes this whole thing to snap apart, so I can’t exactly blame him.)
Nowhere in the text are the promised cuts to taxes on tips, Social Security benefits or overtime pay.
As Bloomberg News reported, the bill “temporarily elevates the standard deduction by $2,000 for joint filers and $1,000 for individuals through 2028” and “would increase a carveout for qualified small business income from 20% to 22% and expands the types of activities that qualify.” Also included would be a small increase in the child tax credit and a raise in the estate tax exemption. But nowhere in the text are the promised cuts to taxes on tips, Social Security benefits or overtime pay. Even without all that, the Joint Committee on Taxation, which has the final word when scoring tax legislation, said Saturday that this version would still wind up adding $4.9 trillion to the federal deficit over the next 10 years.One thing that would lower that number is the bombshell that Trump once again tossed into House Republicans’ smoke-filled room: raising taxes on the wealthy. It’s a prospect he’s floated off and on since retaking office. NBC News reported Wednesday that Trump pushed Johnson to let the top rate on the highest-income Americans rise when the 2017 cuts expire. While White House officials have argued this would dampen Democrats’ criticism of the tax cuts as a handout to the wealthy, most Hill Republicans seem opposed to the idea. Trump’s Friday Truth Social post on the matter was especially confusing: “In any event, Republicans should probably not do it [raise taxes on the rich], but I’m OK if they do!!!”
The Ways and Means Committee is slated to mark up the full tax bill on Tuesday. In this make-or-break moment, when another president might be busy working the phones, trying to forge a cohesive vision for his fractious legislators, this president — whose whole reputation is built on the myth of his dealmaking prowess — appears to have staked out “probably don’t do it, but OK if you do” as his position. As this baffling Truth Social post makes clear, Trump is going to take credit for any positive parts of the bill and blame Congress for failing to do the impossible in achieving all of his expensive promises.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on politics and policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House.