U.S. SENATE – U.S. Senator Steve Daines joined Fox Business today to discuss the One Big Beautiful Bill and the need for permanency in the tax code.
Watch the full interview HERE.
Daines emphasized the need for tax permanency in the reconciliation bill:
Once we receive the Big Beautiful Bill from the House, we’ve got some ideas in the Senate that’s going to make it even more beautiful. I’ll tell you what one of those important revisions are. We need to take the capital and R&D provisions that allow for immediate expensing that currently are just for four years in the House bill and make those permanent. As you said earlier, I was listening to your interview with Jason and with Claudia, is that the reason we do tax policy, it’s a means, it’s not the end. The end is growth. It’s economic growth and it’s global competitiveness. If we take capital and R&D and allow businesses to immediately expense it, it incentivizes more capital investment. It incentivizes more R&D investment. That’s key for competitiveness on R&D. It’s key for growing this economy, certainly on capital. But make that permanent. One of the challenges we face is the uncertainty of the tax code in Washington. Why do we want to have a four-year cliff where it goes four years and ends? We don’t want to place bets on Congress on getting it extended. Let’s make it permanent now. If there’s one thing we could have done better back in ’17, Larry, and I remember working directly with you, we passed a great bill, it ignited the economy, we saw record kinds of economic growth, lower unemployment, wages raising for all Americans, is that we didn’t make the tax cuts for pass-throughs permanent. Let’s not make that mistake again. Let’s take the uncertainty of the equation out by making it permanent. That’s one of the things we plan to do when that House bill comes over to the Senate.
Daines discussed how tax permanency will increase manufacturing in the U.S.:
…We’ve looked at a lot of different ideas and I think there’s going to be a balance here Larry about not doing too much surgery on the House bill because Speaker Johnson has got a, he’s kind of like Moses pulling off miracles here splitting the Red Sea. He’s at a tenuous moment and so we want to be judicious and focused about what we change in the bill, but I know we’ve got a lot of receptivity from members in the House including Jason Smith and the Speaker himself saying it’s probably a good thing to make some of these provisions I just talked about, R&D and in CapEx. But look, by expensing capital immediately, that is a pretty great incentive for more investing in America and manufacturing in America. So I think that’s a pretty big lever to throw. Particularly extended over 10 years and make it permanent- I think that’s a great way, when you’re playing the long game here, to bring more jobs back to America because we’re doing more manufacturing in America.
Daines called out the Congressional Budget Office:
Well, look this is this is looking at this nonsense that comes out from the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office. I call it the Congressional Blunder Office. The problem is, is they have been way off on their forecast, like they did back in ’17, where they were off by one and a half trillion dollars in revenues ’cause they don’t factor in the dynamic nature of these tax policies. When you continue to lower taxes, you ignite economic growth, you increase revenues. It’s right out of the Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, John F. Kennedy, George Gilder, Art Laffer, supply side argument. And that’s exactly what we are doing and that’s why these CBO numbers should frankly be disregarded because they don’t factor in dynamic scoring and the additional revenues as we saw happen in 2017. This is proven Larry. This is not even hypothetical. They missed it in ’17. They’re missing it again here in 2025.
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Contact: Matt Lloyd, Gabby Wiggins