Rep. Estes Joins the John Whitmer Show to Talk One Big, Beautiful Law
Washington,
July 8, 2025
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Hannah Rawles
((202) 225-6216)
U.S. Congressman Ron Estes (R-Kansas) joined the John Whitmer Show to talk about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) after President Donald Trump signed it into law on Friday, July 4th.
Rep. Estes spoke about how the historic legislation stopped Kansans and Americans from facing a 22% tax increase. With this historic legislation, Kansans will now pay an average of $10,900 less in taxes. Additionally, Rep. Estes spoke about the economic growth, innovation and border security that will result from the OBBB. Listen to the interview here and read interview highlights below.
On tax relief: “When you look at the bill ... Kansans and Americans would have faced a 22% tax increase next year if this bill hadn't passed. And for Kansas, it averaged about $2,200 just for next year. And if you look at over the course of the next five years, it had been over $10,000, almost $11,000 in extra taxes that Kansans won't have to pay. At the same time, we're projecting that their salaries are going to go up because of the economic growth out of that. We wanted to avoid the largest tax increase in history. At the same time, we're focusing on, how do we help people? We doubled the standard deduction so people would have more money in their pocket afterwards. We increased the child tax credit.” On American innovation: “One of the things that I've been a champion of is innovation and new ideas. And we did tax teams, 10 different tax teams, over the last couple of years as we've talked about some of the provisions that we ought to put into that. And I chaired the innovation tax team trying to focus on research and development. How do we come up with some of these great ideas and innovative ideas that the United States has always been known for? “So what happened was when the TCJA was passed, it was a temporary period of time where during the first year, all of your research and development costs could be written off of your taxes. And since then, that expired in 2022. So now people are having to write this off over five years, which means if you have to spend the money this year, but you can't write it off with your taxes over a five-year period, you're not going to be able to do as much investment. That's what we've seen in that. “When we passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, research and development spending went up 18%. And that's great for jobs because three-fourths of that spending is for jobs. And it works well in actually growing the economy. We want to make sure that that comes back so that we can make that permanent going forward, companies can make more investment in the United States in research, which ultimately leads to more manufacturing jobs, actually to a stronger America.” |
