EXCLUSIVE: Reps. Van Duyne, Gill, and Houchin are optimistic on extending Trump tax cuts

A trio of House Republicans with front row seats to the ongoing battle over reconciliation are confident that the House will pass the “big, beautiful bill” favored by President Donald Trump — and that the committees they sit on will hit the requisite budget cuts needed in time.

Reps. Beth Van Duyne (R., Texas), Erin Houchin (R., Ind.), and Brandon Gill (R., Texas) discussed the latest on extending the Trump tax cuts, reconciliation, tariffs, and more on the latest episode of the Republican Study Committee’s (RSC) Right to the Point podcast, obtained exclusively by the Washington Reporter.

Van Duyne noted that the “big, beautiful bill” will “include tax cuts, especially for our working American families, border security measures, measures looking at American energy independence, and measures that are looking at potential government spending cuts, because we all know how that is completely out of control.”

“Reconciliation does not normally make a whole lot of sense, but the chief purpose of the reconciliation process is to enhance Congress's ability to change current law in order to bring revenue and spending levels into conformity with the policies of the budget resolution, which is a very long-winded, very technical way of saying that it's really just a means of writing and passing the Republicans’ big, beautiful bill where we're going to have cut taxes, eliminate costly Biden-era rules and regulations and secure the border,” she explained.

For her part, Houchin was optimistic that the Energy and Commerce Committee will hit its target of $880 billion in savings next week. “There is a misconception that 100 percent of that has to come out of Medicaid, and that's just not true,” she said. “We're finding some savings in our energy sector. We're finding savings in other sections of code that aren't in the health care sector…Right now, we have illegal immigrants that are accepting benefits, that are on benefits, even though they're not supposed to be.”

Another priority that Van Duyne identified is how “we are right now trying to extend a lot of the provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” which was something that constituents of both Gill and Houchin want to see done quickly.

“What I hear from my district is that they want us to get this done quickly,” Gill said. “They want to see the tax certainty from these cuts flow through the economy quickly. But what they also want to see us do is back up the president.”

Houchin added that from her perspective, she has seen that “the business owners in our district do not want to see us have a tax increase at the end of the year.”

“So extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is going to be critical so we don't see a tax increase at the end of the year,” Houchin said. “One of the misconceptions is that in this bill is that we're giving tax breaks to billionaires to pay for Medicaid cuts, and none of that is true. In fact, the biggest beneficiaries of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act were in the middle class and the working class, and if we do not in extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, every single American will see a tax increase.”

Specific programs that Houchin is excited about are the “199A small business deduction which is important, and the R and D tax credit is one that we hear about a lot.”

Houchin also clarified that “the idea that somehow we're giving some kind of tax break to billionaires to make cuts [is wrong].”

“We're cutting waste, fraud and abuse. We're making sure illegal immigrants are not getting Medicaid,” Houchin said. “We're making sure that only people who are eligible are getting Medicaid, and we're also instituting work requirements.”

One area where the lawmakers differed slightly with Trump was on his trade agenda — specifically on his proposal for tariffs on movies not made in America. “I don't know how I feel about this,” Van Duyne said. “Honestly, I'm okay if Hollywood dies; I think that they've been a horrible influence in the last few years. I think it's been pretty much overly woke movies that have been coming out.”

For his part, Gill is “totally fine if Hollywood dies.”

“One of our biggest cultural exports is Hollywood, and it's inundated with cultural rot and left-wing filth….Exporting sexual licentiousness via our culture is something that we should all be ashamed of, frankly,” he said.

The GOP trio is more broadly supportive of the president’s agenda on trade, however.
“The president's been very clear from the beginning that there's going to be some short term economic disruption, but get through it,” Gill said. “Let's not allow short term economic disruptions or short term market fluctuations like the stock market dictate long term economic and industrial policy.”

Trump, Gill explained, “identified a problem in the country that's lasted for a very long time, where we've seen our heartland completely gutted as jobs and manufacturing are shipped overseas to foreign countries where we're relying on hostile foreign nations like China for key pharmaceutical inputs.”

The 45th and 47th president, Gill said, is “the greatest negotiator we've ever had in the White House, and I think the greatest in Washington, D.C. right now.”

Van Duyne blamed the media for failing to give Trump “credit where it’s due” on his economic agenda. “When you think about not only the job numbers that we just had, there were crickets in the media. But you start thinking about the trillions of dollars of investment in private dollars, $5 trillion alone by private businesses into America, and then $3 trillion by other countries, including UAE [is impressive].” Another Trump trade win, she said, is India, which just offered “zero for zero tariffs on auto parts and steel from the U.S.”

Finally, the trio tackled the issue of illegal immigration, and made it clear that they have faith in not only Trump, but also in his border czar.

“We need to make sure that Tom Homan has the resources that he needs to continue to do the work that he's doing,” Van Duyne said.

“The American people want to live in a country where you can go out jogging in the morning and not have to worry about being raped by an illegal alien, where you can then send your kids to schools that that aren't being flooded with fentanyl that is pouring across our southern border, and then you can go to a work and not have to worry about your wages being suppressed because we are allowing in tens of millions of people illegally into our country,” Gill said. “That's the kind of country that we are trying to get us back to.”

The latest RSC episode, and all of the others, can be found here.