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Whoever wins the November election will be faced with an immediate challenge: Tax cuts worth more than $3 trillion are slated to expire at the end of 2025. That will hit at a time when money is tight. The national debt has topped $34 trillion, and the cost of servicing that debt is set to exceed $870 billion this year — more than defense spending and Medicare — which means less money to put toward anything else.
President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers designed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that way, so that individual tax cuts, along with quite a few business reductions, evaporate suddenly. Democrats and Republicans are aligned in their view that at least some portion of those tax cuts should be extended. But how — and even if — the government should pay for those extensions is an open question.
That’s why one of the most important jobs in the United States is going to be a scorekeeper. Analysts at the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Joint Tax Committee and other groups “score” the cost of — and savings from — different policy options. How much money would a tax on the rich bring in? How much would eliminating the mortgage........