House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) might have a hard time making his dreams come true.
McCarthy is already making plans for a possibly flipped House next year, telling Bloomberg's Erik Wasson on Thursday that his top priority as House Speaker would be to "make sure our debt is taken care of." But he seems to be forgetting that the 2017 tax bill he got passed with then-Speaker Paul Ryan will likely stop that from happening.
After the GOP-led House released its Tax Cuts and Jobs package in late 2017, an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office showed it would add an additional $1.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. Yet the GOP passed the bill and President Trump signed it into law anyway. And in an attempt to cement some of the law's policies further, the GOP passed another round of policies that were predicted to up that deficit increase to $3.2 trillion by 2038.
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Then again, there's a good chance McCarthy won't have to worry about his 2021 goal at all. Democrats pulled off a massive 41-seat gain last year, and the House hasn't flipped in two consecutive election cycles since 1954, The Cook Political Report notes. It hasn't changed hands during a presidential election year since 1952 either, making McCarthy's ironic dreams look close to dead.
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