Former Vice President Mike Pence’s conservative advocacy group, Advancing American Freedom (AAF), has launched a $10 million educational campaign urging lawmakers to preserve tax cuts passed under former President Donald Trump in 2017. The group released a policy memo calling on members of Congress and voters to maintain the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which is set to expire after 2025. Pence, who helped push the bill through during Trump’s first year in office, highlighted its success as “the largest tax cuts and tax reform in American history,” allowing Americans to keep more of their earnings and bringing jobs back to the country.
The policy memo advises against raising taxes on US workers and small businesses, lowering the corporate tax rate to compete effectively with China, and reducing massive federal spending. Former Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Pat Toomey, who negotiated the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, was the first conservative leader to express strong support for AAF’s campaign. The effort will include congressional seminars, media blitzes, and grassroots activism over the next year.
Pence has said he will not endorse Trump’s 2024 candidacy, but is pushing the policy memo as a key issue during the election cycle and legislative priority in a potentially Republican trifecta in government the following year. Without preserving the 2017 law, taxes would be raised on income brackets by a total of $3.97 trillion, according to the memo. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has warned that extending the cuts could lead to a $5.2 trillion increase in the federal deficit, but the memo notes past instances where estimates have underestimated higher revenues due to a booming economy.
President Biden pledged in an April speech before electrical union members to let the law expire next year if he is elected to a second term, criticizing Trump for increasing the nation’s debt and benefitting the wealthy and large corporations with “his $2 trillion tax cut.” However, a White House official later walked back the remarks, stating that tax relief would be kept for Americans making less than $400,000 per year, blaming Trump and Republicans for raising taxes on the middle class.
The nonpartisan Tax Foundation has predicted across-the-board tax hikes if the legislation lapses in 2026, with single persons making around the average median income of $75,000 paying an additional $1,700 annually to the IRS. The “hidden tax” of inflation since the president took office has also risen cumulatively to more than 19%, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Biden has backed a corporate tax hike up from 21% to 28% to recoup federal revenue, while Trump recently told top CEOs in a Washington, D.C., business roundtable that he supported a 20% corporate rate. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Trump’s signature legislative achievement, reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21.
Biden has pushed tax rate hikes on the wealthy as a potential solution to the nation’s ballooning debt — despite contributing around $3.7 trillion to the deficit during his presidency. The Congressional Budget Office released an estimate on Tuesday that the 2024 budget deficit will be nearly $2 trillion, the largest in US history when excluding periods of war and recession. By 2034, the office predicts it will surge to $50 trillion.
Pence, who founded AAF in 2021, emphasized that “the past few years of the Biden administration have shown us that you cannot spend your way out of inflation, and you will not be able to tax your way out of a spending problem.” He added that “Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem,” noting that the national debt is out of control and that taxing the American people more is not the solution.
