The 2017 federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) provided substantial windfalls to America’s highest earners at the expense of programs vital to the wellbeing and security of everyone else. Now, Congress is considering making many provisions of the TCJA permanent. To make matters worse, the inequitable tax cuts in the “TCJA 2.0” are being paired with devastating budget cuts to already vulnerable programs that people across Kentucky rely on every day, such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Congress is now crafting another budget that would permanently extend the 2017 cuts and cost an estimated $466 billion of revenue in just the first year. Much like the recent Kentucky state income tax cuts, components of the original TCJA disproportionately benefited the wealthiest in our state, and the extension of the expiring provisions will perpetuate those tax cut disparities across income groups, as illustrated in the graph below.
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