Trump and Republicans in Congress eye an ambitious 100-day agenda

WASHINGTON — A levy shatter for millionaires, and almost everyone else.

An complete to the COVID-19-era government subsidies that some Americans have used to purchase health insurance.

Limits to food stamps, including for women and children, and other safety net programs. Rollbacks to Biden-era green vigor programs. Mass deportations. Government job cuts to “drain the swamp.”

Having won the election and sweeping to power, Republicans 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.

Atop the list is the schedule to renew some $4 trillion in expiring GOP levy cuts, a signature domestic achievement of Trump’s first term and an issue that may define his gain to the White House.

“What we’re concentrated on correct now is being ready, Day 1,” said House Majority chief Steve Scalise, R-La., after conference recently with GOP colleagues to chart out the road ahead.

The policies emerging will revive long-running debates about America’s priorities, its gaping profits inequities and the proper size and scope of its government, especially in the face of mounting federal deficits now approaching $2 trillion a year.

The discussions will test whether Trump and his Republican allies can achieve the kinds of real-globe outcomes wanted, needed or supported when voters gave the event control of Congress and the White House.

“The history is really prologue here,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, recalling the 2017 levy debate.

Trump’s first term became defined by those levy cuts, which were approved by Republicans in Congress and signed into law only after their initial campaign commitment to “repeal and replace” Democratic President Barack Obama’s health worry law sputtered, failing with the famous thumbs-down vote by then-Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

The GOP majority in Congress quickly pivoted to levy cuts, assembling and approving the multitrillion-dollar package by year’s complete.

In the period since Trump signed those cuts into law, the large benefits have accrued to higher-profits households. The top 1 percent — those making nearly $1 million and above — received about a $60,000 profits levy cut, while those with lower incomes got as little as a few hundred dollars, according to the levy Policy Center and other groups. Some people ended up paying about the same.

“The large economic narrative in the U.S. is soaring profits equity,” said Owens. “And that is actually, interestingly, a levy narrative.”

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

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

Typically, the worth tag for the levy cuts would be prohibitive. The Congressional apportionment 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 levy package, including lowering the corporate rate, now at 21% from the 2017 law, to 15%, and doing away with person taxes on tips and overtime pay.

But Avik Roy, president of the Foundation for Research on Equal chance, said blaming the levy cuts for the country’s profits inequality is “just nonsense” because levy filers up and down the profits ladder benefited. He instead points to other factors, including the Federal safety net’s historically low gain rates that enable borrowing, including for the wealthy, on the cheap.

“Americans don’t worry if Elon Musk is wealthy,” Roy said. “What they worry about is, what are you doing to make their lives better?”

Typically, lawmakers desire the expense of a policy transformation to be offset by apportionment profits or reductions elsewhere. But in this case, there’s almost no agreed-upon profits raisers or spending cuts in the annual $6 trillion apportionment that could cover such a whopping worth tag.

Instead, some Republicans have argued that the levy breaks will pay for themselves, with the trickle-down profits from potential financial expansion. Trump’s tariffs floated this history week could provide another source of offsetting profits.

Some Republicans debate there’s precedent for simply extending the levy cuts without offsetting the costs because they are not recent changes but existing federal policy.

“If you’re just extending current law, we’re not raising taxes or lowering taxes,” said Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, the incoming chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, on Fox information.

He said the criticism that levy cuts would add to the deficit is “ridiculous.” There is a difference between taxes and spending, he said, “and we just have to get that communication out to America.”

At the same period, the recent Congress will also be considering spending reductions, particularly to food stamps and health worry programs, goals long sought by conservatives as part of the annual appropriations procedure.

One cut is almost sure to fall on the COVID-19-era subsidy that helps defray the expense of health insurance for people who buy their own policies via the Affordable worry Act swap.

The extra health worry subsidies were extended through 2025 in Democratic President Joe Biden’s expense boost Reduction Act, which also includes various green vigor levy breaks that Republicans desire to roll back.

The House Democratic chief, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of recent York, scoffed at the Republican claim that they’ve won “some large, massive mandate” — when in truth, the House Democrats and Republicans essentially fought to a draw in the November election, with the GOP eking out a narrow majority.

“This concept about some mandate to make massive, far-correct extreme policy changes, it doesn’t exist — it doesn’t exist,” Jeffries said.

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

It’s the same procedure Democrats have used when they had the power in Washington to approve the expense boost Reduction Act and Obama’s health worry law over GOP objections.

Republicans have been here before with Trump and control of Congress, which is no guarantee they will be able to accomplish their goals, particularly in the face of resistance from Democrats.

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