PROGRESSIVES INTO BATTLE: Any agreement over how Washington deals with the temporary portions of the Trump tax cuts could easily be a year-plus away, with November’s election results set to have a gigantic influence over those negotiations. And yet, congressional aides, think tanks experts and advocacy group members already spent a couple days last week at the Eaton Hotel in downtown Washington attending a “tax boot camp” on the 2025 battle over the expiring provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Those kinds of prep sessions aren’t unheard of right near K Street, of course. But this time, it was the progressives mobilizing for a tax battle. Advocacy groups on the left firmly believe that they no longer have to run scared from the issue of tax policy — that after decades of GOP dominance, it’s no longer an issue owned by Republicans. They also acknowledge that they’ll likely be outspent in next year’s big tax fight, even as they’re looking to be as organized as ever and with more resources at their disposal than in previous negotiations. So progressive leaders want to make sure that their activists move confidently into next year’s debate, to push the argument that higher taxes on the rich and corporations is a popular idea among American voters — and in many ways take the discussion to places that Democratic leaders like Vice President Kamala Harris aren’t raring to go. “We have to go into this fight in 2025 with a different philosophy that we have brought into previous tax expiration fights,” said Bharat Ramamurti, the former deputy director of the National Economic Council under President Joe Biden. Ramamurti noted how the Obama administration, ever wary of the political blowback from tax increases, extended the vast majority of the Bush-era tax cuts that would have expired at the end of 2012 — in a deal largely negotiated by Biden on the Democratic side, no less. This time should be different, Ramamurti argued, using a slew of PowerPoint slides to argue that the 2017 GOP tax law provided little benefit to the American middle-class, and instead exacerbated an alarming trend of deteriorating tax revenues, as compared to overall GDP of the economy. “We have an opportunity now to take a different approach and make sure that [the Trump tax cuts] are not extended, and that we instead bring in a lot more revenue and make our tax code more fair,” he said at the tax sessions hosted by the progressive Groundwork Collaborative, the Center for American Progress, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and other organizations. MORE ON THIS IN A BIT, but welcome to an extra special “ the pandas are back” version of Weekly Tax. (Certainly preferable to a “raccoons are back” version.) Apparently, not a fun ride for the kids: Today marks an even two decades since the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration formally exempted funeral coaches (also known as hearses) from having to install child car seat anchors — but only after the industry had dutifully complied with the rule for a couple years. Your scoops are safe with us. Send them our way. Email: bbecker@politico.com, bfaler@politico.com, bguggenheim@politico.com and teckert@politico.com. You can also reach us on X at @berniebecker3, @tobyeckert, @brian_faler, @ben_guggenheim, @POLITICOPro and @Morning_Tax. Want to receive this newsletter every weekday? Subscribe to POLITICO Pro. You’ll also receive daily policy news and other intelligence you need to act on the day’s biggest stories. THE TAX INFORMATION WAR: One of the main points that speakers at the boot camp wanted to drive home was that, essentially, tax debates aren't really about taxes. The weeds of tax policy might sound boring, the experts stressed, but they’re also critical to raising funds for whatever progressive issue is most dear to you — like childcare, education, climate change and health care. “Taxes is the key to unlocking whatever your priorities are.” Ramamurti said. To that end, several of the speakers added a related corollary: “Don’t be afraid of expiration.” “Many members of Congress ran on repealing them, tearing them out root and branch,” Kitty Richards, a senior fellow at Groundwork, told POLITICO in between panels. “And we should just thus not be frightened of what happens [if] we just let it expire, because this is a hostage situation in which the hostage is tax cuts for the wealthy.” Let’s be clear: That position is striking for multiple reasons. Predictably, it feeds into Republicans’ own view that tax policy is a winner for former President Donald Trump and their other candidates. They're using the progressives' rhetoric to paint Harris as a wanton tax raiser, despite her more nuanced position on the issue. (They also argue that the law helped spur the economy before the pandemic.) “She’s also known as the taxing queen. She loves taxes,” Trump said of Harris at a recent campaign stop in Reno, Nevada. “I’ve never seen, ever — all these great politicians over here — where somebody’s campaigning on massive tax hikes. She’s campaigning on massive tax hikes.” Biden and Harris have embraced much of the progressive tax platform, though the vice president has tacked more to the center on some issues like capital gains. But it’s also true that at least sounding open to letting all the temporary TCJA provisions expire, as was floated at the boot camp, is at least a step further than Harris, Biden and plenty of other Democrats have been willing to go. Those Democrats have generally favored raising the corporate rate from 21 percent to 28 percent, which would retain some of Trump's corporate cut, and targeting the accumulated assets of the very rich. They also don’t want those making under $400,000 a year to see a tax increase through next year’s negotiations. (It’s worth noting that Harris, who is now openly courting business leaders and Wall Street, agreed with Richards back during the 2020 campaign, something that conservative groups have liked pointing out this time around.) Plenty of temporary TCJA provisions do help those on the middle- and lower-parts of the income ladder, like lower rates and the super-sized standard deduction, even if lots of analyses did find that the benefits from the tax law were tilted toward the rich. The two top GOP tax writers in Congress, House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the Finance Committee ranking member, have also been hitting the morning shows and editorial pages warning that an expiration of the TCJA would mean significant tax hikes for middle-class families. THE POLLING: Well, what do the progressives make of all this? For their part, advocacy groups like Groundwork are wielding data out of Navigator Research, a polling project for progressive campaigns, that shows overwhelming support for raising taxes for the Democratic tax agenda. According to the polling, Americans trust the Democratic party more than the GOP to determine tax rates for the middle class — 49 percent for Democrats, versus 37 percent for Republicans. Three in five of those polled think Republican tax policies support the wealthy and corporations. (Still, the polling also indicates that Republicans hold a not-insignificant edge with independents on taxes and the economy, generally.) Panelists at the recent progressive event also offered messaging advice, on issues like how the estate tax, which kicks in starting at $26 million for married couples, only affects a small slice of the population. “It’s so important for people in the movement to at least understand that the American people are not their problem, that the problem is those entrenched interests and the access they have to the policymaking world,” Richards said. “And we really need to organize a way back against it.”
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