Free-market think tanks across New England joined together Tuesday with a message for the region’s blue-state voters: If the Trump tax cuts are allowed to expire, local families and businesses will feel the pain.
“We are calling for the New England delegations to do the right thing and vote for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), renewing it, and making it permanent, so that New Englanders get the tax relief that they deserve,” said Ross Connolly, Northeast Region Director at Americans for Prosperity (AFP).
According to AFP, should lawmakers fail to renew the current tax rates — set by the TCJA in 2017 — the average New Hampshire family will be forced to cough up an additional $3,472 in federal taxes. Massachusetts residents would feel the most pain in the region. AFP estimates families will have to pay an average of $4,656 annually.
“The real madness this March is within the halls of Congress and the New England federal delegations who are vocally supporting a tax increase on their constituents,” Connolly said.
AFP is spending $20 million this year on an outreach campaign, Protect Prosperity, to push lawmakers to pass the current tax rates.
It’s an uphill fight in New England, where Republicans don’t control any of the region’s 21 U.S. House seats and just one U.S. Senate seat — Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. She voted to pass the 2017 tax cuts.
According to Dennis Hull of Americans for Tax Reform, extending the 2017 tax cuts “will basically function as nitrous for the U.S. economy.”
Tucked inside the TCJA, Hull pointed out, was the 2017 repeal of the Obama-era individual mandate tax. Hull said that repeal was a major reason why median household income soared in 2019 (a 6.8 percent increase, roughly 50 percent more in one year than in all of Obama’s eight years combined).
The problem for Republicans, however, was the timing. The GOP had already lost control of the House by 2019, when Americans began experiencing noticeable benefits from the tax cuts.
“Congressional leaders today cannot afford to give themselves that same electoral disadvantage ahead of 2026,” Hull said. “Every single day Congress waits now to make these tax cuts permanent is a day that many businesses delay their own decisions to create jobs. And on top of that, the tight margins in the House mean that any delay not only slows economic growth, but increases the risk of failure.”
Greg Moore with AFP said if the tax cuts are not renewed, many New England residents are going to be surprised.
“That’s a huge number of people who are going to be suddenly given a crude realization of what the dynamics of the current tax law are,” Moore said. “Americans, in fact, after having years of inflationary pressure that has exceeded their wage growth, want tax relief.”
Moore focused his remarks on TCJA’s tax cuts for small businesses that netted qualifying filers with a 20 percent deduction. He pointed to an Ernst & Young report which found that in New Hampshire, the small business tax cut resulted in 6,000 new jobs and pumped $345,000 into the economy.
In Massachusetts, the 20 percent deduction added more than 27,000 new jobs and $2.9 billion to the commonwealth’s gross domestic product.
“It is absolutely essential that every member of Congress understand the impact of this and what it has on their constituents and the small businesses within their districts,” Moore said.
Drew Cline of New Hampshire’s Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy said the Granite State’s track record shows why cutting taxes ultimately works well for all involved.
“Since 1960, New Hampshire has experienced the highest population growth rate in New England, in large part because of our low taxes and our friendly economic environment,” Cline said. “In the 1980s, our population growth rate was more than double that of Vermont and five times the growth rate of Massachusetts, two states that famously had very high taxes.”
Paul Craney, executive director of the Boston-based Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, noted his state’s most significant tax cut came courtesy of the voters who, in 1980, passed Proposition 2 ½. It limits the amount of revenue a city or town may raise, or levy, from local property taxes each year to fund municipal operations.
The grassroots campaign was led by Barbara Anderson of Citizens for Limited Taxation.
“Barbara Anderson famously said every tax cut is a pay raise,” Craney said. “Fast forward to today, and our congressional delegation has the fate of Massachusetts taxpayers keeping their pay raises if they don’t take action.
“There’s a lot at stake, and we’re just calling on our members of Congress to put partisan politics aside and work for the benefit of their constituents in Massachusetts.”
