Trump and congressional Republicans are considering an ambitious 100-day program, starting with tax cuts.

WASHINGTON — A tax benefits for millionaires and almost everyone else.

The end of COVID-19 era government subsidies which some Americans used to purchase health insurance.

Restrictions on food stamps, including for women and children, and other social safety net programs. Rollback to the Biden era green energy programs. Weight deportation. The government is cutting jobs to “drain the swamp.”

Having won the elections and come to power, the Republicans plan ambitious 100-day program with the elected president Donald Trump in the White House and GOP legislators in the majority of Congress to achieve their political goals.

At the top of the list is a roughly $4 trillion extension plan. GOP cuts taxesIt’s a signature domestic achievement of Trump’s first term and an issue that could define his return to the White House.

“What we’re focused on now is preparedness, Day One,” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, after meeting recently with GOP colleagues to chart the path forward.

The new policy will reignite a long-standing debate about American politics. prioritiesits yawning income inequality and proper size and volume his government, especially in the face of a growing federal deficit that is now approaching $2 trillion a year.

The discussions will test whether Trump and his Republican allies can achieve the real results they wanted, needed or supported when voters gave the party control of Congress and the White House.

“The past is really prologue here,” said Lindsey Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, recalling the 2017 tax debate.

Trump’s first term came to be defined by these tax cuts, which were approved by congressional Republicans and signed into law only after their initial campaign promise to “repeal and replace” Democratic President Barack Obama’s health care law failed in the famous “thumbs-down” vote ” by then – Sept. John McCain, Republican from Arizona.

The GOP majority in Congress moved quickly to cut taxes, cobbling together and passing a multitrillion-dollar package by the end of the year.

In the time since Trump signed those cuts into law, higher-income households have seen larger benefits. The top 1 percent — those earning nearly $1 million or more — received an income tax cut of about $60,000, while people with lower incomes received just a few hundred dollars, according to the Tax Policy Center and other groups. Some people ended up paying about the same.

“The main economic story in the United States is the rapid increase in income equality,” Owens said. “And that’s actually what’s interesting about the tax story.”

In preparation for Trump’s return, congressional Republicans have been meeting privately with the president-elect for months to discuss proposals to extend and strengthen those tax breaks, some of which would otherwise expire in 2025.

This means maintaining different tax brackets and standardized deductions for individual workers, as well as existing rates for so-called pass-through entities, such as law firms, health care providers or businesses that take their earnings as individual income.

Typically, the cost of cutting taxes will be prohibitive. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that maintaining the expiring provisions would increase the deficit by about $4 trillion over a decade.

In addition, Trump wants to include his own priorities in the tax package, including reducing the corporate rate, now 21% from the 2017 law, to 15%, and eliminating individual taxes on tips and overtime pay.

But Avik Roy, president of the Equal Opportunity Research Foundation, said blaming the tax cuts for the country’s income inequality is “simply absurd” because it benefited taxpayers up and down the income ladder. Instead, he points to other factors, including the Federal Reserve’s historically low interest rates, which allow borrowing, including for the wealthy, to be done cheaply.

“Americans don’t care if Elon Musk is rich,” Roy said. “Do they care about what you do to make their life better?”

Typically, lawmakers want the costs of policy changes to be offset by budget revenues or cuts elsewhere. But in this case, in the $6 trillion annual budget, there is almost no concerted effort to raise revenue or cut spending that could cover such a colossal price tag.

Instead, some Republicans argue that the tax breaks will pay for themselves by gradually reducing revenue from potential economic growth. Trump’s tariffs introduced last week could provide another source of offsetting revenue.

Some Republicans argue there is precedent for simply extending tax cuts without offsetting the costs because they are not new changes but existing federal policy.

“If you simply extend the current law, we are not raising or cutting taxes,” Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, the new chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said on Fox News.

He said criticism that tax cuts would increase the deficit is “ridiculous.” There’s a difference between taxes and spending, he said, “and we just need to get that message across to America.”

At the same time, the new Congress will also consider spending cuts, especially on food stamps and health care programs, goals that conservatives have long sought through the annual appropriations process.

One cut would almost certainly come from a COVID-19-era subsidy that helps cover health insurance costs for people who buy their own policies through the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges.

Additional health care subsidies were extended through 2025 under Democratic President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which also includes various clean energy tax credits that Republicans want to eliminate.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York ridiculed Republicans’ claim that they won “some big, massive mandate” – when in fact House Democrats and Republicans essentially fought to a draw in the November election . while the Republican Party received a slight majority.

“This idea of ​​some kind of mandate for massive, far-right political change doesn’t exist—it doesn’t exist,” Jeffries said.

Republicans plan to use a budget process called reconciliation, which allows a majority to pass Congress essentially along party lines without the threat of a Senate filibuster, which could halt a bill’s progress if 60 of 100 senators disagree.

It’s the same process Democrats used when they had power in Washington to approve the Inflation Reduction Act and Obama’s health care law over GOP objections.

Republicans have been here before with Trump and control of Congress, which is no guarantee they can achieve their goals, especially in the face of resistance from Democrats.

Still, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, who has worked closely with Trump on the agenda, promised a “breakneck” pace in the first 100 days “because we have a lot of things to fix.”