Steve Daines Questions Nominee on Tax Code Permanence and Economic Growth

The Urgency of Tax Code Permanence

• 📌 Senator Daines emphasizes the critical need to make the 2017 tax cuts permanent to avoid a $4.6 trillion tax increase.
• 💡 Permanence is crucial for businesses to make long-term capital decisions, projecting benefits over the entire duration of investments.
• 🎯 The individual tax rate is particularly important for partnerships and sole proprietors, who file under the individual code.

Economic Growth and Tax Policy

• 🚀 Making tax rates and the pass-through deduction permanent is presented as vital for economic growth and benefiting taxpayers.
• 💰 The nominee cites Milton Friedman, highlighting that government spending is the true tax and fiscal sanity requires cutting spending alongside tax cuts.
• 📈 The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 is credited with fostering a strong economy, with increased wages and household income, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Impact of Government Spending

• 📊 Federal spending has increased from an average of just over 20% of GDP to approximately 23% post-pandemic.
• ⚠️ High government spending has the potential to crowd out private investment by removing capital available for private enterprise and small businesses.
• 📉 The purely private sector has been stagnant over the last couple of years, possibly due to this crowding-out effect from government spending.