A conservative advocacy group founded by former vice president Mike Pence kicked off a $10 million lobbying campaign Thursday to encourage lawmakers to prevent the repeal of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, enacted during the Trump administration and set to expire in 2025.
Advancing American Freedom said in a news release that its campaign will include "direct engagement with Capitol Hill through seminars, policy memos, and media alongside targeted grassroots activation focused on the ongoing tax and spending debate."
Pence campaigned against Donald Trump for this year's Republican presidential nomination and said he will not back his former boss in November. Yet, his group is advocating to keep key legislation heralded by Trump in his campaign should Republicans win the White House, a majority of the Senate and retain their majority in the House.
Pence said in the news release the legislation was "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 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," Pence said. "Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. Our national debt is out of control, and taxing the American people more is not the solution."
The group focused on five key bullet points in a 13-page policy memo: Washington must prevent looming tax hikes on American workers and small businesses; to beat China, the U.S. must maintain a low business tax rate; tax policy should not be made based on faulty math and inaccurate estimates; Washington cannot tax America out of our spending-driven debt crisis; and to balance our budget, Washington must stop spending beyond its means.
Former Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Pat Toomey, who negotiated the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, was the first conservative leader to express staunch support for Advancing American Freedom's campaign, the New York Post reported.
President Biden pledged in an April speech in front of the North America Building Trades Unions National Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C., to let the law expire next year if he is elected to a second term, criticizing 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 walked back the remarks, the Post reported, and said tax relief would be kept for Americans making less than $400,000 a year, blaming Trump and Republicans for raising taxes on the middle class.
But the nonpartisan Tax Foundation has predicted across-the-board tax hikes if the legislation lapses, with single persons making around the median income of $75,000 paying $1,700 more annually to the IRS, the Post reported.
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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