Senate GOP tax bill would add $1 trillion to the debt, new congressional analysis shows

Show Caption Hide Caption What’s going on with the Trump tax plan? The White House and congressional leaders released a framework for tax changes, but many key details have been left to tax committees. Here’s how that process is working.

WASHINGTON – The Republican tax bill now pending in the Senate would increase the national debt by more than $1 trillion over the next ten years, even taking into account new economic growth sparked by the lower tax rates, according to a nonpartisan congressional analysis released on Thursday.

Thursday’s report from the Joint Committee on Taxation could introduce fresh uncertainty to the Senate deliberations just as Republicans appeared to be on the brink of passing their sweeping tax package.

Most Republicans have argued that their tax bill would generate a wave economic growth, with companies expanding operations and hiring new workers. But several Republican senators have expressed concern about the bill’s potential to add to the nation’s $20 trillion debt load, and this new analysis could inflame those fears.

It also gives Democrats fresh fodder to attack the GOP bill as a fiscally irresponsible sop to the wealthy.

The joint committee’s analysis estimated that the GOP bill would increase the nation’s gross domestic product by about .8 percent, increasing revenues by about $458 billion over ten years. But the bill would cost the treasury $1.5 trillion over ten years, so the new revenue would fall far short of covering that tab.

“This score ends the fantasy about magical growth and claims that tax cuts pay for themselves,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. “They’ve got a really big hole here.”

Julia Lawless, a spokeswoman for the committee’s chairman, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, questioned the analysis. She noted the tax bill is still being tweaked, even as a final vote looms before the end of this week.

“An analysis of tax provisions that do not reflect the final outcome of the evolving Senate tax bill – which will be amended on the floor this week – is incomplete,” said Lawless.

She also noted that the Congressional Budget Office — another independent congressional scorekeeper — said it was not practicable to draw macro-economic conclusions about the Senate bill at this time. During the debate over repealing the Affordable Care Act earlier this year, Republicans generally disparaged CBO's work, which suggested millions of people would lose health care coverage.

“And given that leading economists have projected the Senate tax bill will deliver significantly higher amounts of economic growth and federal revenue than the Joint Committee on Taxation reports, the findings of JCT are curious and deserve further scrutiny,” she said.