Academy Award-winner Elizabeth Taylor, married eight times to seven men, likely entered each union with the hope it would last. Good things, after all, should be permanent.
Yet in Washington, permanence is too often treated as a liability. Nowhere is this more apparent than in tax policy. Thanks to arcane rules surrounding budget reconciliation, Congress routinely enacts pro-growth reforms with an expiration date baked in.
A permanent extension of the reconciliation bill’s pro-growth elements would produce more ‘bang for the buck’ than a temporary extension.
Consider the House-passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Though the measure would extend and build upon President Donald Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, it fails to permanently extend several of the law’s most pro-growth elements.
That’s a mistake. Again, good things should be permanent.
Earlier this month, Unleash Prosperity Now — a nonprofit aligned with President Trump — organized a letter signed by more than 300 economists, myself included, urging Congress to “extend President Trump's tax cuts permanently to prevent a tax increase on January 1, 2026.”
Why do we insist upon permanence? Permanent pro-growth public policies result in better economic outcomes. In contrast, temporary policies create troublesome uncertainty, which, in turn, sows confusion for consumers and businesses, making financial planning and investment needlessly difficult.
A permanent extension of the reconciliation bill’s pro-growth elements would produce more economic “bang for the buck” than a temporary extension. It’s that simple.
According to the Tax Foundation, “Permanence for the [bill’s] four cost recovery provisions would more than double the long-run economic effect.” These provisions would include 100% bonus depreciation, expensing of research and development investment, and a more generous interest deduction limit, among others.
The Tax Foundation concludes:
The current package produces meager effects on GDP and a smaller U.S. capital stock over the long run because the cost recovery provisions sunset. As lawmakers continue to debate the tax package, they should not compromise on permanence for the most pro-growth provisions.
This view aligns with the prevailing economic literature. For example, a 2019 study by the St. Louis Federal Reserve concluded, “A rise in uncertainty is widely believed to have detrimental effects on macroeconomic, microeconomic, and financial market outcomes.”
If that warning were plastered on the side of a pack of cigarettes, it would read, “Congressionally induced policy uncertainty is hazardous to the country’s economic health.”
Fortunately, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) is determined to extend the reconciliation bill’s most pro-growth elements permanently. Bravo, Mr. Chairman!
Permanence aside, why did more than 300 economists call for preventing the tax increase scheduled under current law?
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If taxes increase as planned, the economic fallout could be steep. Wells Fargo warns that average monthly job creation could plummet from 133,000 in the first quarter to just 25,000 next quarter — and then turn negative, with an estimated loss of 17,000 jobs per month in the fourth quarter.
If Congress fails to “spike the hike,” Wells Fargo estimates economic growth will slow to a tepid 1.1% this year and next.
For those worried about the deficit, here's the paradox: Letting the economy slow — or worse, slip into recession — is the surest way to worsen the nation’s fiscal health.
To further underscore the situation, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who directed the Congressional Budget Office from 2003 to 2005, cautions: “Given the weak state of the economy, it [the scheduled tax increase] would likely trigger a recession, and the budget outlook never gets better in a recession.”
Yes, it’s that simple.
Elizabeth Taylor once quipped, “If you hear of me getting married [again], slap me!” At least, she had the right intentions. Congress, on the other hand, routinely resorts to temporary policies to game the reconciliation process. That needs to stop.
To guard against recession, Congress should reconsider the tax increase scheduled for next year. But to boost economic growth, Congress should follow Crapo’s lead and extend permanently the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act pro-growth provisions.
When President Donald Trump returned to office in January, nearly everyone in his circle agreed on the top priority: renewing the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Without action, a crushing 22% tax hike looms, threatening to undo the economic gains of the past decade.
Extending the tax reform would also give businesses and investors the long-term stability they need to plan, expand, and hire.
Repealing the C-SALT deduction would hammer small businesses — the backbone of the American economy.
Instead, the administration has sent mixed signals. Daily shifts in tariff policy have rattled markets and injected uncertainty into every sector of the economy. Investors are jittery. Business leaders are holding back. And analysts are already warning of a potential recession.
These mistakes make it even more important to switch the focus to the tax package. The Trump administration should stop talking about tariffs and focus, along with Congress, on stabilizing markets and laying the foundation for economic growth by getting taxes down.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act delivered everything conservatives had long demanded: 100% expensing for business property, a 21% corporate income tax rate, and a child tax credit that rewarded work. It stood as the defining achievement of Trump’s first term. Making it permanent could help revive the pre-COVID economic boom.
But lawmakers must resist the temptation to gut the law’s pro-growth provisions to fund unrelated priorities. That includes rejecting the misguided push to repeal or limit the corporate state and local tax deduction, known as C-SALT.
Debates about the individual SALT deduction cap have dominated headlines in Washington. Some reforms to that cap may make sense. But individual SALT and C-SALT are not the same issue, and they shouldn’t be treated as interchangeable.
C-SALT promotes growth by preventing double taxation on businesses. It lets employers reinvest earnings, stay competitive, and create jobs. Rolling it back would hit business owners hard, slow hiring, and weaken America’s edge in the global economy.
Policy groups like Americans for Tax Reform and the Tax Foundation agree: Gutting C-SALT would put long-term growth at risk — and betray the core economic agenda that fueled Trump’s first-term success.
For businesses, state and local taxes are an operating expense. If businesses lose the ability to deduct these taxes, they will be paying taxes on taxes.
Repealing the C-SALT deduction would hammer small businesses — the backbone of the American economy. Many already struggle under heavy corporate, state, and local tax burdens, especially in rural and Republican-leaning states. Removing this deduction would force them to shoulder a disproportionate share of the pain.
No serious conservative case exists for eliminating or capping the C-SALT deduction. Some Republicans seem confused, conflating C-SALT with the personal SALT deduction, which overwhelmingly benefits wealthy taxpayers in high-tax blue states. But they are not the same. As the Tax Foundation notes, capping C-SALT won’t “reduce distortive tax benefits or enhance state competition” the way a cap on the personal SALT deduction might — because corporate and individual tax systems function differently.
In 2023, American businesses paid nearly $1.1 trillion in state and local taxes. Stripping away their ability to deduct those taxes from federal corporate income tax amounts to a massive tax hike — potentially hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade.
That kind of tax increase would erase much of the economic progress since the 2017 tax law was passed. It would punish the very job creators conservatives claim to champion.
Lawmakers in Congress — especially Republicans who support free enterprise and pro-growth tax reform that spurs economic growth — should focus on restoring and making permanent the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s tax cuts without jeopardizing the benefits that the C-SALT deduction provides for American businesses of all sizes.
The stock market has been on a serious roller coaster ride this week after false reports that President Trump was pausing his reciprocal tariffs for 90 days began making the rounds on the news and social media.
“We were watching it bounce back, and then all of a sudden it dropped back down again,” Glenn Beck of “The Glenn Beck Program” comments. “Not sure what happened until we checked the news. It seems like all of these media organizations reported an interpretation from some social media user.”
The social media user has posted an analysis of what a Trump official, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, said in an interview, which is what the media then latched on to.
“He was asked by Brian Kilmeade, ‘Would Trump consider a 90-day pause?’ And Hassett said, ‘I think the president’s going to decide what the president is going to decide,’” Stu Burguiere explains.
“There’s no pause, and so now the market’s down again,” he adds.
“What’s going on in our economy is bogus. It’s all this bogus money that the Fed keeps printing and putting into the system with 0% interest rates. It’s all funny money. The stock market is no longer tied to anything real, and everybody just bypassed that and went, ‘Wow, things are really good, things are really good,’” Glenn explains.
“No,” he continues. “It was all bogus. All of that is bogus.”
To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
After former President Donald Trump declared victory last week, the value of Bitcoin, gold, and various stocks skyrocketed. Financial expert and author of “MoneyGPT” James Rickards knows why.
“The immediate reaction to the Trump election was stocks took off, and with good reason. His economic policies, less regulation, drill baby drill, basically getting rid of wasteful investment in what I call the ‘Green New Scam,’” Rickards tells Jill Savage and Stu Burguiere on “Blaze News Tonight.”
“So he has a lot of things that are going to be very good for stocks. However, there’s something bigger than Trump. There’s something bigger than the electoral process, which is the economy itself,” he continues, noting that in the next six to nine months, we may be going through a recession.
“There are a lot of signs of recession out there, so we may get off to a rough start, but the same thing happened to Ronald Reagan in 1982. He had one of the worst recessions in U.S. history but finished with very strong growth toward the end of his first term and into a second term,” he explains.
While Rickards believes that Trump’s presidency will overall be a good thing for the economy, he isn’t so sure about Bitcoin as a form of currency in general.
“I’ve studied Bitcoin for a long time,” Rickards says. “If you want to buy Bitcoin, knock yourself out. But I don’t really think of it as a form of money.”
“It’s really just a form of gambling. I don’t really think of it as an investment. There’s no use case for Bitcoin. Now, can you make money? Absolutely, a lot of people have. So my attitude is I’m not a Bitcoin-basher,” he adds.
As for gold, Rickards explains that the value of it isn’t actually getting higher.
“It’s not that gold’s getting higher, it’s that the dollar is collapsing in front of your eyes,” Rickards says. “What’s really happening is you’re watching your dollar evaporate. You’re watching the dollar crash.”
“The main reason is people are looking for alternatives to the dollar. I’m not saying the dollar is going away. You can’t totally get out of the dollar. It’s too big for that,” he adds.
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