The Facts: Oren Cass vs. The GOP on Tax Cuts & Deregulation

With the presidential candidates now (finally!) set and campaign season fully in swing, many players – particularly on the right – are looking to steer the policy agenda and White House personnel picks for the potential second term for President Trump.

Despite Trump’s strong repudiations of Project 2025, an unrelenting mainstream media campaign launched by former Mitt Romney adviser Oren Cass and his think tank, American Compass, has been aimed at “building the ‘intellectual foundations’ of the Trump-Vance ticket.” Cass and his group are pushing a vision for a far larger, more activist government in Washington, with higher individual and business tax rates – going so far as to call Trump’s #1 domestic achievement, his 2017 tax cut legislation, “an expensive failure.”

As an example of their media push, today Politico published a profile of Cass and American Compass under the headline, “Meet the conservatives bashing Trump’s tax cuts, free trade.”

Yet despite Cass’ fervent insistence that the GOP is abandoning its pro-growth economic agenda, a close look at today’s reality paints a different picture when compared to Cass’ agenda, which CNBC’s Joe Kernan recently characterized as “walking quacking uniparty progressivism.”

• Trump Tax Cuts: Just last month, Cass called President Trump’s #1 domestic achievement, the 2017 tax cut, an “expensive failure” that should not be extended. He has slammed the legislation as “the Trump admin’s key fiscally irresponsible policy.” By contrast, Trump has made clear that he plans to fully extend the tax cuts, some of which sunset in 2025.  Further, House and Senate leadership are on record calling for extending the tax cuts next year should they control both Chambers.

• Corporate/Business Tax Rates: President Trump recently stated in a Bloomberg interview that he supports further cutting the corporate/business tax rate down to 15 percent. The same week, Cass applauded the assertion that the 2017 corporate tax rate cut was among the biggest economic policy mistakes made by Republicans in recent years.

• Regulation: Recently,Cass claimed “deregulation, tax and bankruptcy laws, international agreements and the mismanagement of public pensions have all encouraged the smart money and top talent to gravitate toward manipulating and trading piles of assets rather than building anything.” This is a stark contrast with the Trump White House which touted its “historic deregulation efforts to roll back red tape that burdened Americans and stifled economic growth.” Further, the GOP platform adopted earlier this month commits to “cutting excessive Regulations” that “stifle Jobs, Freedom, Innovation and make everything more expensive.”

As noted above, it’s important to examine the facts of where the mainstream of the Republican Party stands on key pro-growth policies, and not be unduly swayed by the loud but small minority – exemplified by Oren Cass and his ilk – pushing progressivism in today’s GOP.