U.S. House Ways and Means Committee highlights Trump tax law at Iowa State Fair
From left, U.S. Reps. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, Jason Smith, R-Mo., Adrian Smith, R-Neb., and David Schweikert, R-Ariz., alongside other Republican members of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, held a hearing Aug. 16, 2024 at the Iowa State Fair on the 2017 tax cuts set to expire in 2025. (Photo by Robin Opsahl/Iowa Capital Dispatch)While only one presidential candidate spoke at the Iowa State Fair this year, Republican members of the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee brought tax policies supported by former President Donald Trump to a hearing on the fairgrounds Friday.
Seated around bales of straw and a butter cow recreation, the federal committee heard from Iowa business owners about the impacts of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed by Trump. The congressional hearing comes as several provisions from the law are set to expire in the next year, which Republicans and the invited speakers said would hurt Iowa businesses and families if allowed to lapse.
Though the lawmakers did not talk about the 2024 presidential race explicitly, economic policy and measures to combat inflation are expected to be top issues in the upcoming presidential election between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, who won the Democratic nomination after President Joe Biden’s exit from the race.
Libertarian Chase Oliver was the only presidential candidate to speak at this year’s fair.
The GOP committee members praised the 2017 tax law — a measure Trump has said he would extend and expand on as president — and the benefits seen by Iowa families and small businesses. U.S. Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., the committee chair, also drew a contrast between the 2017 law and measures like the Inflation Reduction Act enacted by the Biden-Harris administration.
“Despite its name, the Inflation Reduction Act has done nothing to lower prices from where they were a few years ago,” Smith said. “… None of this would have happened without Vice President Harris’ tie-breaking vote in the Senate.”
All four of Iowa’s U.S. House members, all Republican, sat on the panel at the state fair. U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra, a member of the committee, said he was happy for Iowa to host the committee hearing and show how Iowa families and small businesses are affected.
“This is our way of life that we’re going to talk about today,” Feenstra said. “Our way of life is affected when the tax cuts that happened in 2017 go away. … All (of the tax cuts) have a dramatic effect for our families, for our small businesses, for our main streets. And when they’re affected, our schools are affected, our hospitals are affected, and so many other things.”
The House members heard from speakers including Sarah Curry, the research director for the Iowans for Tax Relief Foundation, Jolene Riessen, president of the Iowa Corngrowers Association, Steve Sukup, the president and CEO of Sukup Manufacturing Co. and Karen Dewalt, the Home Depot vice president of global tax.
Curry, a mother of three sons, said her family saw benefits “immediately” from the Trump-era tax law — most notably through the increase to the child tax credit. The current maximum child tax credit is currently $2,000 per qualifying child for individuals making less than $200,000 annually, and for couples filing jointly with an annual income of $400,000 or less. Prior to the 2017 change, the tax credit was $1,000.
As the parent of a child with disabilities, Curry said that money from the tax credit helped her family pay for needed services to help their children.
“Taxes affect my grocery bill, they affect my gas tank, they really, really, really do impact my kitchen table,” So I would just ask, I mean, for nothing else, to keep it where it is, at $2,000. Any expansion — we’d be very grateful, especially for those young children. … But really, reducing it by any amount would end up with negatively impact my family, my children, and really specifically, our ability to pay for services.”
Harris released an economic proposal Friday to also expand the child tax credit to $3,600 per child in qualifying households, as well as increasing the credit to $6,000 for families with children under a year old.
Other speakers at the panel, like Sukup, said the measures in the tax cut law lowering the corporate tax rate helped their business expand, allowing them to reinvest money in their business by hiring more employees, giving raises and expanding child and health care services for workers.
No Democratic lawmakers participated in the panel. Matt Sinvoic, executive director of the advocacy group Progress Iowa, said it was “really disappointing” that none of the speakers at the hearing were from working middle-class families who would be able to provide a more accurate representation of the Trump-era law’s impact on Iowa families.
“We’re here to make sure that people know how skewed this tax law is in favor of the extremely wealthy and corporations, and really needs to expire at the end of 2025,” Sinovic said. “I mean, so much of this goes to millionaires and wealthy corporations that that don’t need it. They’re not paying what their fair share, what they owe, and it’s at the expense of middle class and working families.”
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