The following is a statement from Ms. Ryan Alexander, president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, on the passage of the tax bill:

“To say we’re disappointed with the passage of the tax bill is an understatement: Congress has a fiduciary duty to the country as a whole, to not pick winners and losers, but to represent us all. Today they failed that duty. After spending the last half-decade arguing for fiscal responsibility, lawmakers voted to increase the deficit by at least $1 trillion.

Tax reform is about hard choices, and has to be an open, bipartisan process to succeed. Neither has been true of this bill. Instead, we are looking at an immediate cut to taxes as an easy option that will mask the tough decisions Congress has avoided, and possibly hopes will go unnoticed.

Except it hasn’t gone unnoticed, because the math doesn’t add up and it doesn’t take much to appreciate what every credible analysis pointed out and the public already sees: This bill doesn’t just blow another hole in the budget, it leaves taxpayers with an even bigger bill down the road. In less than a decade, we’re going to dedicate more than $800 billion annually, just to pay interest on the national debt – more than we’re spending to fund the Pentagon today.

It is a sad irony that Congress voted for policy guaranteed to expand our debt in the same week President Trump released a new National Security Strategy that states the national debt, “…presents a grave threat to America’s long-term prosperity and, by extension, our national security.” If the administration believes that more debt equals a threat to national security, then this tax bill is bad for American security in addition to taxpayers.

Now that the bill is on its way to becoming  law, we hope that Congress will make every effort to be transparent about what the changes in law actually mean, and what they will really cost taxpayers.

Make no mistake, we want tax reform. But we hope rather than believe that the assertions that this will stimulate sufficient wage and economic growth to reduce rather than increase the deficit. And if that growth does not materialize, we urge Congress to go back to the drawing board rather than simply ask the voters for more time and extend all the provisions they made temporary purely to mask the costs. Otherwise this year’s windfall comes with a big future price tag, and that debt will be paid from nowhere else but the taxpayer’s wallet.”

— Ryan Alexander, president of TCS