Dear Representative:

For three decades, Taxpayers for Common Sense, a national, nonpartisan budget watchdog, has been committed to ensuring fiscal responsibility and transparency in federal spending. As you move forward in the budget reconciliation process, we urge you to protect taxpayers by enacting a fiscally responsible bill that prioritizes transparency and accountability over budget gimmicks.

Last week, the Senate passed its version of the fiscal year 2025 budget resolution, which cynically obscures the enormous deficit impact of its provisions and makes no meaningful effort to offset the costs with spending reductions. We strongly urge you to reject the smoke-and-mirrors approach embedded in this legislation.

When the House passed its budget resolution, it included instructions to the Ways and Means Committee to limit deficit-increasing provisions to $4.5 trillion, while directing up to $2 trillion in spending offsets. Much of the deficit increase is likely intended to offset the cost of extending expiring provisions from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which carry a significant price tag of approximately $4.6 trillion. The Senate’s version of the budget resolution instructs the Senate Finance Committee to produce legislation that increases deficits by up to $1.5 trillion, but it hides trillions of dollars in additional future costs through a budgetary sleight of hand.

Specifically, the Senate employs a “current policy” baseline rather than a “current law” baseline.  This maneuver assumes that expiring tax provisions will be extended indefinitely and erases their costs on paper, even though extending these provisions would reduce federal revenues by trillions of dollars—costs that will ultimately add to the national debt. While this tactic may make the legislation appear more fiscally responsible, in reality, it conceals the true financial burden it will place on taxpayers.

The expiring provisions in the TCJA were deliberately designed to sunset within the 10-year budget window to reduce their official cost under a current law baseline. Using a current policy baseline now to obscure these costs undermines this intent and misleads taxpayers about the true fiscal impact of extending these tax cuts. This approach adds fiscal insult to budgetary injury by hiding trillions in additional debt behind technical assumptions.

Instead, Congress should adopt a current law baseline that honestly accounts for policy decisions and their full costs. Taxpayers deserve clarity—not obfuscation—when it comes to how their tax dollars are allocated and how legislative choices will affect deficits and debt.

At TCS, we believe lawmakers should produce legislation that does not add to the deficit or national debt. At a minimum, however, taxpayers have a right to know the full cost of any legislation under consideration.

We urge you to reject any budget resolution or reconciliation bill that relies on deceptive accounting or conceals its true fiscal impact. Instead, we encourage you to lead with transparency and fiscal responsibility as Congress moves through this process.

Sincerely,

Stephen Ellis

President