GOP lawmakers are bashing Biden for driving up inflation, but they could make it worse by extending Trump's tax cuts

• Republicans are eyeing a midterm victory as a method to extend Trump's tax cuts.
• But doing so could cause inflation to rise — something the GOP has criticized Biden for doing.

Republicans are eyeing a victory in the midterms — and they're planning to revive some tax cuts if it happens.

The Washington Post reported on Monday that if the GOP becomes the majority in November, they're looking to extend provisions from former President Donald Trump's 2017 tax cuts, specifically focused on tax rates paid by individuals and corporations.

While President Joe Biden campaigned on rolling back many of Trump's tax policies — he proposed raising the corporate minimum tax to 28% from Trump's 21% — actually doing so has proved politically difficult for Democrats, and Republicans are hoping they can build on tax cuts for the wealthy if they win in November.

"The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has been providing real, substantial relief to families and businesses," Rep. Jason T. Smith, the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, told the Post. "We need to build on that success by making permanent those policies that are supporting families and workers while looking at what more needs to be done to the tax code."

But as Republican lawmakers have been blaming Biden for high inflation levels in the country, extending Trump's tax cuts could cause prices to climb because it would stimulate consumer spending, causing demand to overpower supply. A cornerstone of Republicans' midterm campaigns have been cutting government spending while blaming Biden for high prices, and they have bashed Biden's recent policies like student-loan forgiveness that would add to the federal deficit.

"Putting more money in people's pockets will increase demand for goods at a time of supply shortages. That will drive up prices and worsen the inflation that the governors claim to be so worried about. And it will increase pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates even more than it planned," Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, wrote in March on GOP governors' proposals to cut taxes.

"What a deal: In exchange for modest tax savings, people will pay higher prices and interest costs."

For example, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton previously criticized student-loan relief on Twitter, writing: "More debt & inflation, no personal responsibility—a good summary of Biden's economic policies."

In September, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy unveiled the Republican list of priorities for the next Congress, and it included measures to give businesses more tax breaks while reducing the tax rate paid by the highest-earning taxpayers to 37% from 39.6%, along with repealing Biden's efforts to bolster funding for the Internal Revenue Service. Republicans seized upon the false notion that IRS funding would bolster the agency's workforce by 87,000 new agents. In actuality, the funding from the Inflation Reduction Act is earmarked in part for backfilling vacant roles, and helping to modernize the agency — which has been flailing after years of GOP budget cuts.

While the GOP plans to make tax cuts for the wealthy one of their first plans of action if they take control of Congress, Biden's White House told the Post it will continue to fight against those efforts.

"While President Biden and congressional Democrats are fighting to make middle class families the heart of our economy. … Republicans want to sell those families out to rich special interests and by doubling down on their 2017 tax giveaway to the ultrawealthy and corporations," White House spokesman Andrew Bates said.

The Trump tax cuts have proven to have real political staying power, even with Democrats' razor-thin majority. Democrats pledged to cut back on the suite of cuts in their 2020 campaigns.

But more centrist elements of the party have halted any more substantive changes, as any rolling back of the law would likely have to pass through party-line reconciliation. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's been consistently opposed to any hikes on large corporations, something that's put her at odds with fellow centrist Sen. Joe Manchin. Any real discussion of the future of the tax cuts probably won't come until 2025, when the individual cuts provision expires.