Thread by @brendanmdunn

Schumer says prior to infrastructure meeting, "By reversing only the most egregious giveaways in President Trump's tax bill -- and raising the corporate rate a smidge, we could finance the entirety of a $1 trillion infrastructure bill."

Let's fact check this.

Here's the JCT analysis of the Conference Report on TCJA.
file:///C:/Users/bdunn/Downloads/x-67-17%20(5).pdf

A few things stand out.

The entire cost of all the bracket reductions was $1.2 trillion

By comparison, the cost of doubling the standard deduction was $720 million.

George Bluth Sr. liked to remind his family that 'there's always money in the banana stand.'

Well, there's 'always money by increasing rates in the lower brackets.' But absent radical Warren-style reforms, major revenue just isn't there in the upper brackets.

Raising the top bracket back to its pre-TCJA rate maybe raises 1/10 of the cost of a $1T infrastructure bill. So where does the remainder come from?

The estate tax reforms? That raised $83 billion.

The 20% deduction on business income for pass-through businesses raised real money -- $415 billion. But that was paired with tax increases of $150 billion. And I doubt the support is there on the Democratic side to drill these businesses.

But let's assume that's where they wanted to go. Major tax increase of $415 billion on pass-throughs, roughly $100 billion to increase the top bracket (that's probably liberal), and $80 billion on estate tax.

So we've raised about $600 billion.

So the "smidge" of an increase in the corporate rate -- at about $100 billion per point -- is roughly 4 points, an increase from 21% to 25%.

This doesn't seem like a lot, but the ? lawmakers should be asking JCT, and that reporters should be asking Schumer, is what this 'smidge' of a rate increase (one that probably would need to be in the 28% range if he was being realistic) would do to the offshoring of jobs/capital

Oh....and they have now agreed not to a $1 trillion bill. They agreed to a $2 trillion bill. So let's layer in another 9-10 points on the corporate rate.

They dynamic analysis of all of this would be of interest as well.

thehill.com/policy/transpo…