River Bend Times

U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon and the Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, issued a statement in response to recent data from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB). The CRFB report suggests that making the Trump Tax Giveaways permanent could result in an increase of $37 trillion to the national debt over the next 30 years. This increase would potentially more than double the size of the economy by 2054.

The CRFB's estimate is based on data from a report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which projects that if Congress makes these tax cuts permanent, it could expand the national debt by $4.5 trillion over the next decade. According to Merkley, Republican leadership intends to use a budget strategy called "current policy baseline" to make these tax cuts appear as though they add no cost to the debt.

Merkley criticized this approach, stating: “If Republicans succeed in using their desired budget gimmick, the so-called ‘current policy baseline’, to indefinitely extend their Trump Tax Giveaways to millionaires and billionaires, they’ll add $37 trillion to the national debt over the next 30 years. Republicans love to talk about fiscal responsibility — until they’re the ones in charge. We cannot allow them to line the pockets of their rich friends like Elon Musk while running up deficits and slashing essential services that help working families across the country.”