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center on budget and policy priorities
House GOP Budgets Paired With Project 2025 Would Create 'Harsher' Nation for Working Class
Analyzing the three proposals in tandem "brings the implications of influential conservative policymakers' and a think tank's broader fiscal policy agenda into sharper focus," CBPP said Tuesday, explaining how—if enacted—the plans would slash critical social programs such as Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance, disinvest from public infrastructure and medical research, attack immigrants, and double down on "skewed, expensive, and ineffective tax cuts" for the rich.
The liberal think tank estimates that the three right-wing proposals would strip Medicaid coverage from tens of millions of people in the U.S., take early learning services from roughly 800,000 children, curb cash assistance for millions of seniors, and cut nutrition assistance for tens of millions of low-income families. Such proposed cuts are consistent with the budgets Republican nominee Donald Trump put forth during his first term in the White House.
"The RSC budget calls for cutting average Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits by about 22%," CBPP's new analysis observes. "This cut would affect 41 million people participating in SNAP."
"And Project 2025 calls for gutting summer food assistance programs that children in families with low incomes rely on when school is out, which could include the new Summer EBT program that is expected to provide grocery benefits to more than 21 million children this summer," CBPP added.
The think tank emphasized that "behind these eye-popping budget numbers are millions of real people who will see health coverage, food assistance, and other forms of support taken away."
"This will make it even harder for them to afford the basics, leading to serious hardships such as homelessness or overcrowded living, food insecurity, hunger, and untreated health conditions," the CBPP said.
While proposing funding cuts that would strip food aid, healthcare, and other programs from working-class people across the U.S., the three proposals align behind a tax agenda that would disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans, according to CBPP.
"For example, each agenda would double down on the 2017 tax cuts, whose core provisions are tilted heavily toward high-income households," the think tank said Tuesday. "The RSC budget calls for the continuation of all of the 2017 law’s individual income tax cuts and adds substantial tax cuts for corporations, wealthy shareholders, and large estates on top."
"Project 2025 goes further," CBPP added, "calling for a set of extreme near-term tax policies that would raise taxes on middle- and low-income households while cutting them for wealthy households, shareholders, and corporations."
Additionally, each of the three right-wing policy proposals calls for the elimination of an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) funding boost approved by congressional Democrats and President Joe Biden as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. The funding increase has allowed the IRS to collect over $1 billion in past-due taxes from the wealthy in the U.S., according to the agency.
CBPP's new analysis lends weight to Democrats' warnings that House Republicans have injected elements of the deeply unpopular Project 2025 agenda into key government funding fights in the lead-up to the November elections, in which control of the White House and Congress are at stake.
"It is also notable what is missing from these agendas," CBPP said Tuesday. "Despite rhetoric from some Republicans about the need to support families—and children in particular—these sweeping agendas do not call for new or increased investments to help families afford childcare or rent, to expand the Child Tax Credit, or to bolster the [Earned Income Tax Credit] for workers without children."
"And they do nothing," the analysis adds, "to ensure that all workers have access to paid family and medical leave so they can take time off to welcome a new child, attend to a health issue, or care for a family member who needs them."
Analysis Shows How Surging Stock Buybacks Bolster Case for Corporate Tax Hike
Chuck Marr, vice president for federal tax policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) wrote in his new analysis that "other studies have shown that the corporate rate cut overwhelmingly benefits high-income people and has failed to deliver to workers the benefits its proponents promised."
He referenced research from the American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institution, and University of North Carolina as well as the Joint Committee on Taxation and Federal Reserve Board that exposes how the law hasn't lived up to the GOP's claims.
"The fact that it also launched massive buybacks is a further reason why policymakers should revisit the rate cut next year—part of the larger course correction needed in the nation's revenue policies as major pieces of the 2017 law expire," Marr argued.
Buyback is a term for when a company purchases its own outstanding stock to reduce the number of shares on the market and increase the value of the remaining ones, a practice that further enriches shareholders.
"Excluding the pandemic-induced recession in 2020, buybacks have been markedly higher every year since the 2017 law, and are projected to top $1 trillion in 2025 for the first time," Marr noted, citing Goldman Sachs.
Some companies—such as John Deere—have even laid off workers while buying back stock, as Common Dreams has reported.
"The fact that corporations have significant excess cash beyond their investment needs and are using it to further enrich already affluent shareholders suggests that partially reversing the corporate rate cut, as President Biden has proposed, poses little risk to investment or the broader economy," Marr wrote. The president's proposed rate is 28%.
"Policymakers have an opportunity to move away from corporate tax cuts that haven't delivered on their economic promises and toward a tax system that raises more revenue through progressive policies like increasing the corporate tax rate," he explained. "They can then use those revenues for investments to make the economy work better for everyone, such as an expanded child tax credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, childcare, and housing."
Marr also urged lawmakers to go even further and "raise the excise tax on stock buybacks to 4% from the current 1%."
The CBBP is far from alone in framing the looming expiration of some tax cuts as a chance to pursue more progressive policy. In fact, the center is part of a coalition led by Groundwork Collaborative that is calling on Congress to "use the expiration of these provisions as an opportunity to address long-standing problems with our tax code, not just to tinker around the edges."
Some progressives on Capitol Hill—such as Sen Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who supports a wealth tax targeting the richest Americans—are also seizing the moment.
Warren said earlier this month: "It's time to stiffen our spines. President Biden is right: If the 2025 tax bill doesn't call on the wealthy and giant corporations to shoulder a bigger share of what it costs to run this country, Democrats should reject it outright. No more Trump tax breaks for billionaires."
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