Republicans are looking to use their sweep of Washington to extend or modify the expiring tax cuts from the GOP’s signature 2017 law.
While debate continues to rage over whether the GOP will use one or two reconciliation bills to push their priorities, here are key players who could make or break that process.
The Chairs
Budget reconciliation always begins in the same place—the House and Senate Budget committees. Anything that goes through the panels led by incoming Senate Budget Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and House Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) requires their approval.
The budget resolution kicks off the multi-stage process setting the amount that can be added to the deficit through reconciliation. The resolution directs committees to provide spending recommendations that hit its top-line spending targets.
Graham has said he hoped a reconciliation bill would include provisions to increase immigrant detention space, hire more enforcement agents, and expand US-Mexico border wall construction.
Arrington in the last Congress held hearings on the growing national debt. His panel also advanced bipartisan legislation creating a fiscal commission that may help lawmakers reach bipartisan agreement on difficult fiscal choices.
GOP House lawmakers have been working for months on priorities so they have a consensus reconciliation plan ready early in the next Congress, Arrington told reporters in November.
“The speaker and leader asked me to run point, to sort of take inventory of all the various policies and strategies that we could deploy in a resolution with reconciliation instructions,” he said. “So now we just have to work through it collectively.”
The Scorekeepers
Cost estimates by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation and the Congressional Budget Office for proposed legislation can mean the difference between passage or failure.
Many lawmakers see their “scores” as the gold standard.
JCT chief Thomas Barthold and CBO head Phillip Swagel have been holding sessions with lawmakers to explain parts of the expiring law, and will be in the spotlight if called to testify about their estimates during committee hearings and markups.
The CBO uses JCT tax estimates in its calculations and will be an important piece of the revenue-estimating puzzle, as it evaluates other fiscal elements like revenue from tariffs. That may be an important metric for debt hawks, given that Trump has threatened to slap heavy tariffs on foreign-made goods.
The Parliamentarians
Why didn’t Democrats’ 2022 tax-and-climate law include immigration provisions or a means to increase the federal minimum wage? It was on account of determinations from the office of Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough.
MacDonough is the sixth Senate parliamentarian and the first woman to lead the nonpartisan office responsible for advising and assisting lawmakers on questions related to the chamber’s legislative rules, precedents, and practices. The House has a parliamentarian, too, but their role in reconciliation is less prominent.
Since 2012, MacDonough has been the chamber’s de-facto reconciliation referee, determining whether a proposal complies with the complex rules that give a party the ability to circumvent the Senate’s 60-vote filibuster threshold.
Republicans used the process in 2017 to pass the tax overhaul, and Democrats will be ready to challenge provisions they believe are out of order.
The President’s Advisers
The incoming president’s influence was on display when they helped tank a bipartisan stopgap spending measure ahead of the Dec. 20 shutdown deadline.
Republican lawmakers were forced to backtrack and put out a pared-down version of the package after facing a revolt with two prominent voices—the men whom Trump has tapped to rein in government spending: Tesla Inc. and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Trump last week signaled his intent to nominate longtime tax staffer and lobbyist Kenneth Kies to be his assistant secretary for tax policy. That’ll put a veteran of the JCT and House Ways and Means Committee as the president-elect’s point person on extension of the GOP tax cuts.
Getting the OK from people who have Trump’s ear will be paramount for lawmakers seeking to extend parts of the 2017 tax law he signed, and deliver campaign promises like ending taxes on tips or Social Security benefits.
The Staffers
Lawmakers typically get the spotlight on Capitol Hill, but they rely on an army of staff to help them with details.
Tax-writing committee and leadership office staff are comprised of lawyers, tax professionals, and business experts with decades of experience from top companies, Big Four accounting firms, and government agencies.
The staffs are willing to get into into the weeds of the policy, fielding ideas from lawmakers, meeting with the administration and officials from both chambers, getting the cost analyses from JCT and CBO and directing the Office of the Legislative Counsel on how they want bills drafted.
“Members are obviously driving the big-picture strategy and policy decisions,” said Marc Gerson, a former House Ways and Means Committee tax counsel now at Miller and Chevalier. “But for a lot of fulfilling that strategy, they heavily rely on staff.”
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) took over as the chamber’s majority leader this Congress, and hasn’t revealed how he will structure his tax staff.
The top tax adviser to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is Derek Theurer, and his policy director Dan Ziegler will oversee the reconciliation process.
Theurer moved to Johnson’s office last May from the Ways and Means panel, earning praise from Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) for his work helping to broker agreement on last year’s $78 billion House-passed tax bill.
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