When Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, it was with Republican control of both houses of Congress, often described as a “unified government.” This enabled passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017, the most comprehensive tax reform legislation in a generation. It also obviated the need for political compromise or cooperation. The TCJA passed along strict party lines without a single Democrat’s vote, though one Republican senator and 13 Republican members of the House voted against it.
The TCJA’s fast-track through Congress required Senate Republicans to invoke budget reconciliation, a legislative procedure that enables expedited consideration of legislation that changes spending or revenues. As a legislative tactic, budget reconciliation requires only a sheer majority vote for passage, bypassing the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold. (The use of budget reconciliation tends to be a political stratagem for the political party in power with a unified government. For example, the Democrats deployed budget reconciliation similarly to pass the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, when they controlled both Houses of Congress and the executive branch.)
Budget reconciliation, however, bears conditions and limitations related to increases in the deficit and losses of government revenue. These constraints compelled Republicans to make trade-offs, primary of which was to make nearly all of the tax cuts pertaining to individuals temporary. As such, at the end of 2025, nearly all of the TCJA’s individual tax cuts will expire and the implicated tax laws will automatically revert to as they were in 2017 — a tax increase for most Americans. This sun-setting will occur unless Congress passes new legislation to extend or make permanent the TCJA’s changes.
The same political circumstance of unified government will accompany at least President-elect Trump’s first two years in office. That political advantage notwithstanding, this essay is a call to congressional Republicans to use the necessity of tax reform as an opportunity to unify and demonstrate political statesmanship; to resist the temptation succumbed to in 2016 to strong-arm legislation through on a partisan basis.
This invitation acknowledges the impossibility of unanimous political will forming behind broad tax legislation. So it is much more modest, with an eye towards tax law stability: it is that the Republicans operate within the constraints of the filibuster. Rather than once again invoking a technical legislative workaround that allows a sheer party-line vote, Republicans should try to craft legislation that will attract at least seven Democrats, so as to overcome a filibuster with 60 votes. This would not only be a signal to a divided country that cooperation across political divides is still possible and desirable, but it would free Congress from the constraints of budget reconciliation, perhaps preempting the possibility of another round of sun-setting tax laws in the not-too-distant future.
The probability of bipartisan support should increase when considering the effect of not extending the TCJA’s tax cuts. The rates will increase across all but two of the seven brackets, and the bracket widths will narrow, a combination of which increases taxes for low, middle and high-income earners. The standard deduction will decrease by almost half. The child tax credit will decrease by half and considerably fewer people will be eligible for it. A deduction for eligible self-employed and small business owners equal to 20% of their business net income will end. Perhaps most unfortunate of all, the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), a complicated shadow tax system originally designed to ensure that the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, but which had crept into the tax circumstances of millions of middle-income earning taxpayers, will be reinstated. In 2017, over 5 million taxpayers paid AMT. During the era of the TCJA, only around 200,000 taxpayers per year paid AMT. The AMT’s return at pre-TCJA levels would affect an estimated 7.6 million taxpayers. Convincing seven Senate Democrats to join an effort to stave off these comprehensive tax hikes shouldn’t be such an extraordinary task.
Admittedly, implied in all of this is that neither party seems willing to reign in deficit spending, the long-term consequences of which may be the country’s financial ruin — a bipartisan effort no one should endorse.
It is also admitted that this legislative invitation is offered in vain with little hope of acceptance. On the list of priorities when either party holds unified political power, depolarization, compromise and durable bipartisan tax policy seem to fall well below political opportunism and the seemingly irresistible call to exploit power.
The views expressed in this opinion article by the author are his alone and don’t necessarily reflect those of his employers.
