Senate Dems lose bid to ditch determination that tax cut extension will not add to deficit

Senate Republicans have been working day and night to bring the Trump-backed “Big, Beautiful Bill” to the finish line in the upper chamber for its required return to the House, but in doing so, they have courted controversy with their efforts to make permanent the president’s 2017 tax cuts.

As The Hill reports, a party-line vote on Monday formalized a decision to allow the tax cuts to be scored as deficit-neutral, thus allowing it to remain in compliance with the Byrd rule, which permits the bill’s passage with a simple-majority vote, something with which Democrats vehemently disagree.

Democrats fall short

As the outlet explains, Democrats were unable to overturn a ruling from the Senate chair determining that the bill does not contravene the 1974 Congressional Budget Act.

The GOP utilized what is known as a “current policy” baseline to score — for budget purposes — the desired extension of the 2017 tax cuts as not adding to the federal deficit.

That outcome stands in contrast to what would have occurred if the tax cuts had been scored on a so-called “current law” baseline with the assumption that the cuts would expire at the end of this year.

Under that scenario, the measure would be viewed as adding roughly $3.5 trillion to the deficit between the years 2025-34 and also add to deficits after 2034, which would exceed the 10-year window required for the Byrd Rule’s provisions for a simple-majority vote to apply.

Had the Republicans not succeeded in securing the preferred scoring, they would have had to rewrite significant aspects of the bill, something GOP leaders desperately hoped to avoid, given the tight timeline already in play.

Democrats cry foul

The push by Republicans to lock in their preferred scoring method was met with strong resistance from Democrats, who, as WJBF noted, likened the move to “going nuclear” to get the outcome they — and Trump — wanted.

Tensions came to a head on the Senate floor when Democrats began challenging the Senate’s presiding chair over the dispute, with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Senate Finance Committee ranking member, leading the charge.

“This is the nuclear option. It’s just hidden behind a whole lot of Washington, D.C. lingo,” Wyden declared.

Fighting back against that line of argument was Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who pointed out that Democrat former Senate Budget Committee Chair Kent Conrad (D-ND) utilized the same scoring method to achieve passage of a farm bill.

Republican Sen. Mike Crapo (R-ID) further noted that in 2012, then-President Barack Obama’s budget office made the argument that an extension of expiring Bush-era tax cuts could also be scored under the “current policy” model and thus viewed as not adding to the deficit.

Vote-a-thon continues

As of Tuesday morning, the vote-a-rama in the Senate, in which lawmakers continued to take action on procedural and substantive adjustments to the bill, passed the 24-hour mark, with the status of a handful of potential GOP holdouts still unclear.

Whether the House and Senate will ultimately meet the president’s desired deadline of July 4, the day on which he hoped to affix his signature to the sweeping bill, is something that still remains to be seen.

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