Republican tax bill would add $3.7 trillion to the national deficit: JCT

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Hill

05/13/25 11:45 AM ET


The tax portion of Republicans’ wide-ranging bill full of President Trump’s domestic priorities would cost $3.7 trillion over the next decade, the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) found. That fits within the parameters laid out in the budget blueprint Congress adopted earlier this year, which allowed the House Ways and Means Committee up to $4.5 trillion for changes that could increase the deficit.

Tables from the JCT, which is the official revenue scoring body of Congress, show that extensions of the 2017 tax cuts and other measures will add about $5.6 trillion to the deficit, while cuts to renewable energy incentives and amped international tax enforcement will reduce the deficit by about $1.9 trillion.

The JCT score does not provide an estimate for the restriction of Medicaid coverage proposed by Ways and Means Republicans but says the estimate will be provided by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

The score, released Tuesday ahead of a committee hearing, is relative to the CBO’s January current law baseline, Thomas Bathold, the JCT’s chief of staff, told The Hill. The deficit addition is rubbing GOP budget hawks the wrong way, though some say they intend to be open-minded about it.

Read more: https://thehill.com/business/budget/5297588-republicans-tax-bill-jct/

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As a note - usually you hear about the CBO "scoring" when reconciliation is being done but this is a rare report of one of the Congressional Committees doing it.

Brookings Institute had a good primer on this -

How do JCT and CBO differ in modeling expiring TCJA tax provisions?


Sarah Ahmad and Louise Sheiner
January 14, 2025


Congress relies on the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) to estimate the revenue gain or loss for tax bills, and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to estimate the impact of spending bills. Both agencies provide “static” scores that assume that changes in taxes and spending don’t affect GDP. But members of Congress and other analysts are often interested in the economic effects of taxes and spending changes, both for their deficit impact and broader implications for economic growth.

Both JCT and CBO provide such dynamic analyses of major legislation, but they use different approaches and sometimes come up with different answers.

(snip)