ICYMI: Republican US Senate candidates want to make Trump’s tax cuts permanent [American Journal News]

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American Journal News: Republican US Senate candidates want to make Trump’s tax cuts permanent
By Jesse Valentine 
December 22, 2023

• In December 2017, President Donald Trump signed a tax bill into law that benefited wealthy Americans and big corporations. Six years later, Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate say they want to make the law permanent.

• Kari Lake, a Republican running for a U.S Senate seat in Arizona, has explicitly called for preserving Trump’s tax law. “We agree that we don’t want Trump’s tax cuts to end,” Lake said of herself and her fellow Republicans in a Dec. 19 appearance on “The Afternoon Addiction” radio program. 

• Bernie Moreno, a businessman running in the Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat in Ohio, has also called for keeping the TCJA intact. Moreno previously ran for Senate in 2022. At that time, his campaign website listed protecting the law as a top priority… “We need to protect the historic tax cuts signed into law by President Donald J. Trump.”

• Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose is also running in the Republican primary. In October, LaRose participated in a candidate forum and called for making the TCJA permanent.

• The winner of the Republican primary will face incumbent Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who supports removing the corporate tax benefits in the TCJA. “Taking away some of the tax breaks corporate interests got will only help the economy, it won’t hurt it,” Brown told CNN in 2021. “It will increase the ‘whine quotient’ from corporate leaders, but they always whine and always want tax cuts. Their $3 million, $4 million and $10 million compensation is never enough.”

• Incumbent Republican senators also back keeping the tax law. In 2022, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, who is up for reelection in 2024, released what he called the “Rescue America Plan,” one of the provisions of which is titled “Make the Trump tax cuts permanent.”
  
  
• In 2018, Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who is also up for reelection in 2024, introduced an amendment that would have made the Trump income tax cuts permanent. 

• Polls show that these Republicans are out of step with what most Americans want. A Pew Research poll in April found that 61% of Americans feel corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes. Some 60% feel wealthy people don’t pay their fair share.

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