Rubio must oppose tax bill for Florida families
Sen. Marco Rubio conditioned his support for the sweeping tax legislation before Congress on an increase in the child tax credit. As a fiscal hawk, he should also be concerned about how the plan substantially adds to our national debt — and, more important, is full of budgetary gimmicks that are dishonest and dangerous.
Official nonpartisan scorekeepers found that the tax-cut package Congress is racing to pass will add more than $1 trillion to the federal debt over the next 10 years. Even the most charitable analysis of the proposal finds that it leaves us deep in the red. Some lawmakers and the president say the tax cuts will pay for themselves, but there is no credible analysis that comes to this same conclusion.
The reason the tax package is so far in the negative is because Congress has failed to follow through with its original promise for tax reform: lowering the rates and broadening the base. This was the mantra during the Reagan years during the tax overhaul in 1986. But unlike the last comprehensive tax-reform effort, there are lower rates without much new revenue from repealing special carve-outs and giveaways in the tax code.
Instead of closing loopholes in the tax code, Congress has employed a menu of gimmicks in order to mask the true cost of the tax-cut bill. The most significant gimmicks, in terms of dollar amounts, are the timing tricks riddled throughout the bill. All of the individual tax cuts are set to expire in 2025, but leadership acknowledges the plan is to extend them, adding hundreds of billions of dollars to the already significant increase to the deficit. And the Senate bill is silent on the temporary tax provisions that are set to expire this year or next, and already there is talk of an additional “tax extenders” package to make sure those provisions are preserved.
Add some more to that deficit increase.
There are also parochial favors in the bill, including a proposal to begin drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee says will produce $1 billion. That is a paltry number compared to a bill that costs $1,500 billion, and it is difficult if not impossible to reach even that meager amount of revenue. Every square inch of land put up for auction would need to be leased and exploration and production begin immediately, neither of which ever happens. Oil and gas companies would need to offer bids far in excess of any comparable bids in the region, by several orders of magnitude. In fact, just this week there was a lease sale of nearby lands; oil and gas companies paid $14.50/an acre and bid on less than 1 percent of the lands offered. At that price and interest level, opening up the Arctic would net taxpayers $45,000.
Rubio is familiar with the difficulty Congress has had imposing limits to federal spending through the Budget Control Act. To think the loss of more than $1 trillion in revenue is going to be solved with spending cuts of this magnitude is wishful thinking.
I have great respect for the senator, but if he thinks this tax bill is not going to make our federal budget problems worse, he is wrong. It’s not too late for him to stand up for our fiscal future and oppose the tax bill. Then Congress can turn to doing the real tax reform we were promised.