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WASHINGTON (TND) — What to do about the upcoming deadline to extend tax cuts passed during the Trump administration is increasingly becoming a campaign issue as the presidential election nears and lawmakers try to decide what position to take on the issue.

The 2017 tax cuts were one of the signature achievements of former President Donald Trump’s term and were highly contentious when making it through Congress. Many of the provisions included in the bill are set to expire at the end of 2025, which will have the most direct impact on lower- and middle-class households, setting up a debate between the two parties about how to move forward as the deficit continues to grow and inflation lingers.

If Congress doesn’t act, many of the changes made under the 2017 law will lapse, resulting in the standard deduction shrinking, a higher marginal tax rate and reducing the child tax credit. More than half of U.S. households would end up paying more in taxes, according to an analysis by the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit that favors lower tax rates and a simpler code.

A Congressional Budget Office report released last week said extending all the tax cuts would reduce federal revenue by roughly $4 trillion over the following 10 years, most of which comes from the 95% of American households that make less than $400,000.

The upcoming deadline puts Democrats that are already on the defense over economic issues and inflation in a bind — support a policy they have railed against for years or line up behind a politically unpopular move of taxes increasing while voters are already feeling the brunt of higher costs from inflation.

Over the weekend, Trump went even further, saying he wants to reduce taxes for all Americans at a rally in New Jersey and congressional Republicans have already lined up behind extending all of the expiring cuts.

“Instead of a Biden tax hike, I’ll give you a Trump middle class, upper class, lower class, business class big tax cut,” Trump said at a rally Saturday.

A pledge to decrease taxes adds to the difficulty for Democrats to navigate in the upcoming election.

“One of the strengths that Trump has is that he constantly puts the Democrats on defense,” said Alison Dagnes, a political science professor at Shippensburg University.. “Democrats are once again going to be on defense, trying to explain why everybody doesn't get a massive tax cut. Politically for Trump, it is a genius move.”

Biden has pledged he would not raise taxes on households making under $400,000, which make up nearly all of the people who would see increases if the next Congress does not renew his tax plan when it expires in 2025.

The president has proposed several different tax increases, including in his budget proposal released earlier this year that included hikes on corporations, new rules for multinational corporations and a tax on unrealized capital gains. But his campaign has also recently said he would let the cuts expire before later clarifying he intended to keep his $400,000 pledge.

White House economic adviser Lael Brainard gave a speech on Friday saying that Congress should use the upcoming debate to reduce the growing budget deficit.

“At minimum, we should avoid making the fiscal hole created by Republican tax cuts deeper, by fully paying for any tax cuts that are extended,” Brainard said in a speech at the Brookings Institution. “And we should use the 2025 tax debate as an opportunity to meet our national needs by raising revenue overall by asking the wealthy and large corporations to pay their fair share.”

Republicans have also frequently called for addressing government spending and the deficit, but they have also been supportive of Trump’s tax plan remaining intact.

House Republicans have also already disputed the CBO’s findings and projections about extending the cuts, arguing that the plan exceeded CBO projections after being implemented and federal revenues continued to grow despite the tax reductions.

“Beyond what the Trump tax cuts did for economic growth and federal revenues, it provided major benefits to working families,” GOP leaders of the Budget and Ways and Means committees said in a statement. “Republicans believe working families do not need the IRS taking any more out of their pockets, especially at a time when they are already paying for the nearly 20 percent increase in prices under ‘Bidenflation.’”

All of it comes as the United States’ deficit has ballooned to nearly $35 trillion with administrations of both parties having done little to meaningfully address it over the last several decades. Congress was also just hit with yet another warning about the looming shortfalls hanging over Medicare and Social Security that will soon require difficult choices once they become insolvent.

The national debt and entitlement programs are tied up in debates between parties about government spending that are key issues in the upcoming presidential election that will require congressional interference with high political stakes.

“The solutions are clear. They're not easy, but they're fairly clear, and there's such a wholesale rejection of addressing these major, major problems that we are putting the golf ball on the tee for catastrophe, and nobody wants to take a crack at solving it,” Dagnes said.

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