Senate Tax Plan Has Too Little Reform and Too Much Debt

For Immediate Release

Senate GOP leaders yesterday unveiled their version of tax reform, which resembles the House’s bill but also differs in several significant ways. The following is a statement from Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget:

The current tax reform debate shows Congress just can’t seem to shake its addiction to debt. Although the Senate plan has fewer gimmicks than the House bill, it would add more to the debt after 2027. And although the Senate bill goes further than the House in cutting some tax breaks, it is less aggressive elsewhere.

Fundamentally, the Senate bill suffers from the same fatal flaw as the House bill – it tries to cut taxes by $1.5 trillion over the next decade with no plan to pay for these cuts. As recent dynamic scores have shown, there is no way economic growth can pay for more than a fraction of this cost.

In fact, tax cuts that add to the debt do less to grow the economy than fiscally responsible reform and may even hurt economic growth over the long term.

It is frightening that so many members of Congress are willing to believe in fantasy economics based in no historical or mathematical reality.

If tax cuts paid for by debt are signed into law, Congress will have sent a massive, budget-busting tax bill to our children to pay, and it will result only in a short-term sugar high with little to no economic improvement over the long term.

As the Senate marks up this bill, we encourage members to either propose some serious pay-fors or scale back the cost of the bill and reject any gimmicks that hide its true cost.

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For more information contact Patrick Newton, Press Secretary, at newton@crfb.org.