Congressional Republicans aren’t altogether sure how or when to extend the party’s 2017 package of tax breaks, but there is no doubt that this is at the top of the GOP’s priority list for the next Congress. Among the challenges facing the party, however, is how to pay for more tax cuts — or whether to even try.

In case anyone’s forgotten, when Donald Trump and his allies championed massive tax giveaways to the wealthy and big corporations in 2017, among the Republicans’ key arguments is that they didn’t have to offset the costs of the cuts. Party officials instead argued, with great sincerity, that tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations would magically pay for themselves through increased growth.

The bizarre claim has been thoroughly and repeatedly discredited, but too many GOP officials who really ought to know better continue to cling to the fiction. Politico reported last week, for example:

Some lawmakers are going off-menu with their own dynamic analyses. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), another tax writer, says he believes the [2017 law] generated so much economic activity that it almost entirely paid for itself, even if that’s hardly what official forecasts said. So, he says, if they merely extend that law, it will be mostly paid for too. “That’s oftentimes not appreciated,” he said.

It’s “oftentimes not appreciated” because the underlying claim has no basis in reality. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained in a report published over the summer, when it comes to fiscal responsibility, the GOP’s 2017 package of tax cuts was wildly irresponsible.

When looking for explanations as to why Trump, in his first term, added nearly $8 trillion to the national debt — much of which happened before the pandemic in 2020 — the tax breaks he signed into law are the obvious and accurate answer.

It’s against this backdrop that the Congressional Budget Office examined the impact of extending the GOP’s tax policies, and as The Washington Post reported, the price tag was enormous.

The price tag for extending the tax cuts continues to grow, according to nonpartisan congressional bookkeepers. … Extending the tax cuts would add more than $4 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years, a massive sum that could spook foreign investors and increase borrowing costs.

The article added that some GOP lawmakers are exploring ways to offset some of the costs, in part by way of “changes to Medicaid,” among other ideas.

I can see the 2026 campaign ads now: Republicans undermined health care benefits for low-income families because they wanted to pass tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires.

The CBO’s findings did not go unnoticed among congressional Democrats. Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, the ranking member on the House Budget Committee, said in a written statement that the GOP tax cuts “don’t pay for themselves — they never have, and they never will.”

Boyle added, “Adding $4.6 trillion to the deficit isn’t just reckless — it’s a direct attack on the hardworking families Republicans claim to represent. … The hypocrisy is breathtaking. Republicans lecture us about fiscal responsibility when it comes to helping working families, but they have no problem blowing up the deficit to reward the wealthy and well-connected.”