In an interview with Mike Schikman on WSVA radio, Congressman Ben Cline was asked about the Republicans’ tax and spending bill (AKA “The One Big Beautiful Bill”) which passed the House of Representatives by one vote.
Schikman: “Let’s talk about the cost of this bill. It’s going to add to our deficit, isn’t it?”
Cline: “We hope not. We hope that this bill, which is going to keep taxes low, and create enormous growth in our private sector and our in our small business communities, we’re going to see growth to the level we saw before COVID and that is going to keep the deficit down. When we combine that with the revenues that are coming in from tariffs and the revenues that are going to come in from the savings from DOGE and other things, we think we’ll be able to keep this revenue neutral, or close to it.”
Not a whole lot of certainty here. But last January CNN reported:
Conservatives in Congress say they will insist that the full package — including any extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts — are fully paid for, unlike the first time around.
“Republicans want to return to fiscal responsibility that has been lost over the last several years under leadership from both parties,” said Rep. Ben Cline, a member of the Freedom Caucus and GOP budget committee.
Can we expect the “enormous growth” that Cline is counting on? Not based on the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed by Republicans in Congress during Donald Trump’s first term.
Proponents of the corporate tax cut argued that businesses would invest amounts saved in new equipment, facilities, and their workforce, thereby fueling economic growth. Yet this promised investment boom failed to occur. Although investment rose following enactment, it initially did so at a lower rate than proponents’ claims implied and then slowed before turning around in the wake of substantial public investments made to stem the impact of the pandemic-induced recession.
Despite Republican promises, wages for low-paid workers did not increase. However the deficit did increase.
The Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office have published several estimates of TCJA’s expected budget impact. These estimates all show TCJA substantially reducing revenues and increasing deficits over its first decade. The specific amount varies—from about $1 trillion to $2 trillion…
As for revenues from tariffs, which will come largely from US consumers paying higher prices, that depends on Trump’s mood from day to day. In other words, they are nothing to depend on.
As I noted in a previous post, DOGE savings turned out to be far short of Elon Musk’s and Ben Cline’s expectations. And DOGE may end up costing taxpayers more than it saves.
Speaking of DOGE, Elon Musk– for whom Cline has had nothing but praise and to whose brain he has compared his brain unfavorably— had something to get off his chest today:
He added:
Those who voted for it, of course, include Ben Cline and all but two other House Republicans.
When Cline posted a photo of him and Musk on Facebook last December, one commenter may have been prescient:
Gene Zitver is the editor of ClineWatch.
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