A faction of Republicans demanding a "budget-busting tax cut" could threaten the Trump administration's entire agenda, argued the chief economist for a conservative economic think tank in a new article.
Oren Cass wrote in Thursday's New York Times that one group in particular — a free-enterprise advocacy group called The Club for Growth — was pushing the administration to prioritize maintaining the huge tax cut that became law during President Donald Trump's first term.
That cut is scheduled to expire this year, and hard-liners say restoring the law "must be Congress’s 'top priority' because it 'delivered record economic growth.'"
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Trouble is, "That’s not true," Cass wrote. "Economic growth was lower in the year after the law’s passage than the year before. The two-year stretch that followed its passage saw slower growth than any other two-year period of the economic expansions in the 1990s and 2000s — not the kind of record anyone should be boasting about."
Cass wrote that tax cuts "simply are not a top priority for the American people broadly, the working class that now forms the core of the Republican coalition nor even the Republican Party itself." He backed up his claim by citing a Fox News survey showing just 1 percent of voters "said tax reform should now be President Trump’s top priority."
Cass also cited a survey compiled by his own organization, American Compass, that found "most working-class voters would want to see Congress raise taxes on corporations and on households with income about $250,000 before cutting spending."
"With the federal budget deficit much larger than it was eight years ago, genuine fiscal conservatives within the party oppose simply extending the cut for eight to 10 more years. But the anti-tax activists insist it’s the only way forward," Cass wrote. In addition, he argued that fighting over the "low priority" tax bill "will stall the more promising elements of the Trump agenda and expose themselves as badly disconnected from the interests of the working class that put them in power."