Former Vice President Mike Pence’s conservative advocacy group on Thursday kicked off a $10 million educational campaign to urge lawmakers to keep tax cuts passed under former President Donald Trump in 2017.
Advancing American Freedom released a policy memo Thursday calling on members of Congress — and voters who elect them — to preserve the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that will expire after 2025.
Pence, 65, who helped the bill become law during the first year of the Trump administration, trumpeted its success in a statement as “the largest tax cuts and tax reform in American history that let the American people keep more of their hard-earned money and returned jobs to America.”
The 13-page policy memo advises against tax hikes to US workers and small businesses, lowering the corporate tax rate to compete effectively with China and reducing massive federal spending.
Former Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Pat Toomey, who negotiated the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, was the first conservative leader to express strong support for the Advancing American Freedom campaign.
The campaign will include congressional seminars, media blitzes and grassroots activism over the next year.
Pence has said he will not endorse Trump’s 2024 candidacy, but is pushing the policy memo as a key issue during the election cycle and legislative priority in a potentially Republican trifecta in government the following year.
Without preserving the 2017 law, taxes would be raised on income brackets by a total of $3.97 trillion, per the memo.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has warned of a $5.2 trillion increase to the federal deficit if the cuts are extended, but the memo notes instances in the past where estimates have low-balled higher revenues due to a booming economy.
President Biden pledged in an April speech before electrical union members to let the law expire next year if he is elected to a second term, ripping Trump for having increased the nation’s debt and “benefited the wealthy and the biggest corporations” with “his $2 trillion tax cut.”
A White House official later walked back the remarks and said that tax relief would be kept for Americans making less than $400,000 per year, blaming Trump and Republicans for raising taxes on the middle class.
However, the nonpartisan Tax Foundation has predicted across-the-board tax hikes if the legislation lapses in 2026, with single persons making around the average median income of $75,000 paying $1,700 more annually to the IRS.
The “hidden tax” of inflation since the president took office has also cumulatively risen to more than 19%, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Biden, 81, has backed a corporate tax hike up from 21% to 28% to recoup federal revenue, while Trump, 78, recently told top CEOs in a Washington, D.C., business roundtable he supported a 20% corporate rate.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the former president’s signature legislative achievement, slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.
Biden has pushed tax rate hikes on the wealthy as a potential solution to the nation’s ballooning debt — despite contributing around $3.7 trillion to the deficit during his presidency.
The Congressional Budget Office released an estimate on Tuesday that the 2024 budget deficit will be nearly $2 trillion — the largest in US history when excluding periods of war and recession.
By 2034, the office predicts it will surge to $50 trillion.
“The past few years of the Biden administration have shown us that you cannot spend your way out of inflation, and you will not be able to tax your way out of a spending problem,” said Pence, who founded AAF in 2021.
“Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” he added. “Our national debt is out of control, and taxing the American people more is not the solution.”
