https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/12/gop-considers-writing-off-tax-cuts-00227219It’s the accounting maneuver that could break the Senate, upend the federal budget process and explode the national debt.
That’s according to critics of a fiscal tactic that congressional Republicans are now seriously considering as they struggle to figure out how to deliver on all of President Donald Trump’s policy demands.
Adopting the “current policy baseline,” as it’s called, could be the only way for the GOP to make Trump’s 2017 tax cuts permanent and avoid painful cuts to federal programs, as well as pile on new income tax exemptions for tips, overtime and Social Security. Trump is expected to discuss the move with members of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee at a White House meeting Thursday.
If lawmakers adopt the change, it would essentially make it appear as though extending current tax rates, set to expire at the end of the year, would cost nothing rather than the roughly $4 trillion over 10 years that nonpartisan scorekeepers estimate.
