If Donald Trump enters his second presidency with any single mandate from the public, it is the expectation and demand that he undo the categorical disaster that has been Bidenomics. Trump’s prime objective is to spur economic growth and slow inflationary spending.
Virtually all Republicans, and more than 4-in-5 voters overall, considered the economy very important to the 2024 election. The majority of the electorate expects that Trump will improve the economy and cut taxes, while nearly half believe he will reduce both grocery prices and the federal budget deficit.
Trump knows that doing any of this is contingent on prioritizing an extension of his landmark 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. So, Trump ultimately will defy Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and the House Freedom Caucus to push for a single blockbuster bill through the congressional reconciliation process. That will allow Senate Republicans to pass it with a simple majority in the 100-member chamber rather than the usual 60-vote threshold necessary to overcome a Democratic filibuster.
The economic plan, which is still being written by congressional Republicans, will also encompass border security and energy deregulation. Trump simply can’t afford not to pass “one big, beautiful bill,” as the president-elect put it recently.
Unlike any other of Trump’s campaign promises, economic policy is uniquely constrained to congressional authorization. And Trump’s economic policy in particular comes with a deadline. While the corporate tax cut that led to business tax revenue doubling was made permanent in the 2017 law, the individual and estate tax provisions of the TCJA are due to expire right as Republicans head into the 2026 election year.
Failing to extend these TCJA provisions would result in a tax hike for 62% of people. The longer 2025 drags on, the more leverage Democrats and RINO dissidents know they will have over Trump. The incoming president simply cannot afford to defy his key campaign promise by not just failing to cut taxes but actually overseeing an increase in them for nearly two-thirds of the country.
Thune and the Freedom Caucus would prefer that Republicans first pass a reconciliation bill dedicated to the record-shattering migrant crisis invited by Joe Biden’s presidency. And then pass a second reconciliation bill dedicated to fiscal policy. Not only is this a waste of political capital and questionable parliamentary procedure, but punting the fiscal policy down the road also, again, threatens the entire raison d’etre of Trump 2.0.
Since Republican control of the Senate means that Vice President-elect J.D. Vance could override three Republican defections to pass the simple majority required for reconciliation bills, House control will be down to 217 Republicans and 215 Democrats once House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) gets confirmed as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL) leaves the House by Jan. 20 (Inauguration Day) to become Trump administration national security adviser. This means that until spring special elections are held to fill those seats (plus a vacant one previously held by Florida GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz), if the entire Democratic Caucus votes against a tax extension bill, Republicans cannot afford a single defection.
Recall that the last time the GOP passed two reconciliation bills in one year was 19 years ago. The last time a House minority had 215 members or more, as Democrats do now, was almost an entire century ago. If Republicans have limited political capital to burn and a lengthy laundry list of priorities on which to budget it, they would be wise to bank on their first reconciliation bill of the year as their only one. They can build the proposal around TCJA extension and expansion at the core and add permitting reform, border security, and energy policy.
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Packaging a plethora of priorities together makes the legislative math easier. Trump’s fiscal agenda requires the compliance of a razor-thin House majority and a solid, but hardly huge, GOP edge in the Senate.
Trump is already fixing the border crisis on his own. His ability to reverse Bidenomics is a ticking time bomb, and if Republicans don’t move quickly enough, he will have to depend on Democrats to do it.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
