On Thursday, the Republican tax bill seemed to have all the momentum it needed. But a vote was delayed after a report found the calculations were off by a trillion dollars. Also, the White House has a plan to replace the secretary of state with the head of the C.I.A., and the head of the C.I.A. with a sitting senator. Guests: Jim Tankersley, who covers taxes and the economy for The New York Times; Peter Baker, The Times’s chief White House correspondent. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.
Duration
23m
Broadcast on
01 Dec 2017
Audio Format
other
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On Thursday, the Republican tax bill seemed to have all the momentum it needed. But a vote was delayed after a report found the calculations were off by a trillion dollars. Also, the White House has a plan to replace the secretary of state with the head of the C.I.A., and the head of the C.I.A. with a sitting senator. Guests: Jim Tankersley, who covers taxes and the economy for The New York Times; Peter Baker, The Times’s chief White House correspondent. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.
For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
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This podcast is supported by the Capital One Venture X Card. Venture X offers the premium benefits you expect, like a $300 annual Capital One travel credit for less than you expect. Elevate your earn with unlimited double miles on every purchase, bringing you one step closer to your next dream destination. Plus, enjoy access to over 1,000 airport lounges worldwide. The Capital One Venture X Card, what's in your wallet? Terms apply, lounge access is subject to change. See CapitalOne.com for details. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbero. This is The Daily. Today, Republicans delay a vote on their tax bill after a report that the economics were off by a trillion dollars. And the White House's elaborate plan to replace the Secretary of State with the head of the CIA and replace the head of the CIA with a sitting senator. It's Friday, December 1st. So Jim, throughout the day on Thursday, all the momentum seemed headed toward a vote on the Republican tax bill. Then what happened? Well, the official scorekeepers of Congress, the Joint Committee on Taxation, sort of dropped a bomb into the process. Jim Tankersley covers taxes and the economy. They released a long-awaited economic analysis of the tax bill that says, "This is how much we think it's going to grow the economy, and this is how much tax revenue we think it's going to produce." And then you subtract that from the cost of the overall tax cuts and you find, "Well, will this leave a big budget deficit at the end of 10 years?" And what the committee said was, "Yeah, it's going to raise deficits by about a trillion dollars over 10 years," which is a big number, particularly for fiscal conservatives. How much did Republicans anticipate that this bill might generate in terms of deficit? So Republicans have been coy about this, but they have generally said that they think the bill will pay for itself. And there are $1.4 trillion in tax cuts in the Senate bill, which would mean zero extra deficits, so they were off by a trillion, roughly speaking. I mean, how could people in Congress, putting together a bill of this scale, be off by such an extraordinarily large amount of money, one trillion dollars? Well, they say it's the committee that's off. They say that the committee is just not seeing what they see in terms of how much growth will be created by tax cuts. Fundamentally, what this comes down to is, Republicans just are really true believers in the growth power of tax cuts, and they have talked themselves into the idea that these cuts will pay for themselves, even though no other credible model of this bill that we've seen has suggested they would come anywhere close. Okay, so members of Congress find out on Thursday night that their tax bill will blow a trillion dollar hole in the deficit according to this analysis, how do they react? Well, most of them kind of shrug it off, but one very important Republican, Bob Corker, and another Jeff Flake seem to really take it seriously. It stops them in their tracks.
Transcription truncated.
On Thursday, the Republican tax bill seemed to have all the momentum it needed. But a vote was delayed after a report found the calculations were off by a trillion dollars. Also, the White House has a plan to replace the secretary of state with the head of the C.I.A., and the head of the C.I.A. with a sitting senator. Guests: Jim Tankersley, who covers taxes and the economy for The New York Times; Peter Baker, The Times’s chief White House correspondent. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.
