Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are considering an ambitious 100-day program, including cuts to taxes and social programs.

WASHINGTON — Tax breaks for millionaires and almost everyone else.

Ending Covid-19-era government subsidies that some Americans used to buy health insurance.

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

Having won the election and taken power, Republicans are planning an ambitious 100-day program with President-elect Donald Trump in the White House and GOP lawmakers in the majority in Congress to achieve their policy goals.

At the top of the list is a plan to extend the GOP’s roughly $4 trillion tax cut, 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 emerging policies will revive long-standing debates about America’s priorities, massive income inequality, and the proper size and scope of its government, especially in the face of a growing federal budget deficit that now approaches $2 trillion a year.

The discussions will test whether Trump and his Republican allies can deliver the real results they wanted, needed or supported when voters handed 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 was 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 a 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 situation in the United States is growing income inequality,” 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.

On top of that, Trump wants to include his own priorities in the tax package, including cutting the corporate rate, currently 21% under 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. “What they care about is what are you doing 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.

“The idea of some kind of mandate for massive, far-right policy 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.”

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The story has been corrected to reflect that Lindsey Owens of the Groundwork Collaborative was talking about “income inequality,” not “income equality.”

The video in the player above is from a previous report.