Former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn said Thursday that his biggest regret about the major tax overhaul he helped shepherd through Congress is that Republicans were unable to make the individual tax cuts permanent. Instead, that part of the tax law will expire at the end of 2025.
“The one thing that still haunts me is that we were unable to make the personal side permanent,” Cohn said at a public interview Thursday.
[Also read: Paul Ryan promises House will vote to make individual tax cuts permanent]
In order to comply with budget process rules that limited the total size of the tax cuts to $1.5 trillion, Republicans made the individual income tax cuts temporary, including the rate cuts, the changed child tax credits, and the special break for businesses whose income flows straight through to owners’ tax reforms.
The expiration date on the tax cut sets up the possibility of major fiscal showdown in Congress in 2025, and an opening for Democrats to undo parts of the changes.
Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs banker who served as Trump’s National Economic Council director, said he was cautiously optimistic that Congress would vote to make the cuts permanent. “That would be important to me,” he said at the Washington Post event. Cohn left the White House in April.
But at the time the tax bill was being passed, he said, the priority was reforming the corporate side of the tax code and lowering the corporate tax rate in order to stimulate the economy.
He also said he regretted that Trump was unable to pass a major infrastructure passage, and said the initiative got bogged down in debates over financing.
“The whole infrastructure discussion was not handled as well as we could have handled it,” Cohn said.
