McConnell: Tax bill won’t add to nation’s debt woes

Associated Press

LOUISVILLE, Ky.

Fresh off his biggest legislative victory of the Trump era, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Saturday disputed projections that the Senate’s tax bill would add to the nation’s debt woes.

Back home in Kentucky just hours after the Senate narrowly pushed through the nearly $1.5 trillion tax bill, McConnell predicted that the boldest rewrite of the nation’s tax system in decades would generate more than enough economic growth to prevent the burgeoning deficits being forecast.

“I not only don’t think it will increase the deficit, I think it will be beyond revenue neutral,” he told reporters. “In other words, I think it will produce more than enough to fill that gap.”

Over the next decade, Republicans’ tax plan is projected to add at least $1 trillion to the national debt. That would be on top of an additional $10 trillion in deficits over the same period already being forecast by the Congressional Budget Office.

“I’m not one of the total supply-siders who just believes that if you cut taxes, no matter what amount, you turn out ahead,” McConnell said. “I still believe in revenue neutrality for tax reform, and I believe this is a revenue neutral tax reform bill.”

McConnell’s hometown congressman, Democrat John Yarmuth, said Senate Republicans had “abdicated any claim they had to being the party of fiscal responsibility.”

“There is nothing remotely responsible about forcing through a ... hastily conceived bill to give tax cuts to the already wealthy and multinational corporations,” Yarmuth said in a statement.

McConnell predicted that the GOP-led House and Senate can resolve differences over the tax legislation and get it to President Donald Trump before Christmas.