By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Eastern Kansas Congressman, Derek Schmidt, says Congress needed to approve President Trump’s budget bill before tax cuts approved in Trump’s first term expired.
Schmidt voted with nearly every Republican in the U.S. House to approve the Senate’s version of the bill that kept tax cuts from expiring January 1st.
“So, we had to get that done,” Schmidt tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “I’d put that right at the top of the list. It was time sensitive. It was urgent, needed to happen, it did. It’s very good public policy and we won’t have to do that again. We can move down the road.”
Schmidt says while citizens might not have been concerned now about the federal tax cuts approved in 2017, they would have noticed come January if Congress hadn’t acted.
The bill also raised the federal tax deduction for Social Security benefits and allows individuals to deduct part of their tips and overtime pay from taxable income.
It increases funding for border security.
“Also, this got less discussion, but very important for eastern Kansas that I represent,” Schmidt says. “Congress had been overdue by years, I think two-plus years now, in passing a new Farm Bill. Typically, Farm Bills come every five years. They didn’t get it done the last two years even after the expiration. And we got big parts of a Farm Bill extension in this bill. They’re now law.”
The bill extends crop insurance.
Critics have focused on the cost of the bill, claiming it will add $3 trillion to the federal deficit over a 10-year period. Schmidt says that number is in dispute, because it is based on an assumption that the tax cuts would have expired.
“You know, the accounting is something that the people that do numbers will fight about over time,” Schmidt says. “My own view is the first step toward getting your fiscal house in order is to control the explosive growth in spending and this bill takes a step in the right direction for the first time in generations.”
The bill does contain cuts. It reduces some federal food stamp and nutrition programs. It adds restrictions to Medicaid.
Schmidt insists, overall, the legislation took the country a step in the right direction.
“Like I said at the time, there’s some things I would have preferred not be there. They weren’t my first choice, but you’ve got to compromise,” Schmidt says. “It’s easy to say the good outweighed the bad for the people I represent.”
You can follow Brent on X @GBrentKFEQ
