Can Democrats Stop the ‘Tax Doom Loop’?

Democrats are tired of losing to Republicans on tax policy. They’re hoping to mount a comeback next year.

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For more than two decades, Democrats have watched with frustration as tax policy in the United States has settled into a pattern, one that Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, calls the “tax doom loop.”

It goes like this: Republicans pass huge tax cuts that are, at first, only temporary. By the time the tax cuts are set to end, Americans have become used to owing less to the government. Hesitant to raise taxes, Democrats join with Republicans to continue many of the cuts indefinitely.

To liberals, this cycle is to blame for a range of social and economic ills. Widening inequality. Ballooning deficits. A federal government without the resources to pay for a progressive agenda.

And next year, they hope, is their chance to finally stop it.

That’s because much of the last large Republican tax cut, a 2017 law signed by President Donald J. Trump, will expire after 2025. Progressive tax experts and activists have spent years organizing to convince the Democratic Party that rather than simply extending the cuts, it needs to ensure the United States brings in more tax revenue so it can finance more generous social programs.

“People want to avenge it,” said Lindsay Owens, the executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive advocacy group that is meeting with congressional staff and preparing advertising campaigns on the tax debate.

It’s an uphill fight. Cutting taxes remains a popular political promise. Mr. Trump and Republicans are pushing to extend the law and further reduce taxes if they come into power. While Vice President Kamala Harris has pledged to raise taxes on high-income Americans and corporations, her presidential campaign has also said she would not raise taxes on any household making less than $400,000. That means she, too, wants to continue much of Mr. Trump’s tax cut.

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