FIRST ON FOX: A powerful, fiscally conservative political advocacy group is launching what it says is an eight-figure campaign to urge Congress “to protect prosperity” by renewing the sweeping tax cuts signed into law by President-elect Trump during his first administration.
Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the influential and deep-pocketed grassroots network founded by the billionaire Koch Brothers, is announcing that it’s spending $20 million to launch a wide-ranging campaign to urge the extension of Trump’s signature Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).
The campaign, which includes an ad blitz starting this week in all 50 states, was shared first with Fox News on Monday.
“Americans must unite and tell Washington now is not the time for higher taxes. By extending and improving the Trump tax cuts, we can make America more affordable, create greater opportunity, and reignite the American dream,” the narrator in one of the AFP ads argues.
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The 2017 law revised the nation’s tax code and gave a financial break to nearly all taxpayers. Many of the provisions are scheduled to expire at the end of this year, which would likely result in a tax increase for many Americans if Congress is unable to pass legislation to extend the cuts.
AFP says Congress is “facing a countdown to crisis that threatens the family budgets of virtually every American.”
The group also said that millions of Americans will pay an extra $1,500 or more next year in taxes if the cuts are not extended.
AFP President and CEO Emily Seidel, highlighting that her group worked alongside Trump to pass the tax cuts last decade, called them the most pro-growth tax reform in American history.
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“Renewing the TCJA must be a top priority so we can ensure this historic achievement continues to fuel decades of economic prosperity – and AFP is fully committed to mobilizing millions of people to ensure it gets done,” Seidel told Fox News in a statement.
AFP Vice President of Government Affairs Akash Chougule argued that the expiration of the tax cuts would “result in crippling tax increases for millions of families,” but “by extending and improving on the TCJA, we can make America more affordable, create greater opportunity, and reignite the American dream.”
The group, and its aligned political wing, has a wide-ranging grassroots network across the country that it touts has reached nearly 30 million voters the past two years.
AFP says it will once again activate its grassroots army “to ensure pro-growth tax reform is Congress’ top priority” through “calls to lawmakers, community phone banks, and 20,000 contacts at constituent doors planned in February alone.”
The group says its campaign will also include more than 1,000 meetings at congressional offices, in-district events with their activists, roundtables with job creators and “shared testimonials from real American families and businesses who would suffer if Congress fails to renew the Trump tax cuts.”
Also being utilized: op-eds at the national and state levels, TV and radio interviews, direct mail efforts and AFP’s highly visible podcast.
During his campaign last year to win back his old job in the White House, Trump repeatedly pledged to extend his tax cuts.
No Democrats voted for the original tax cuts, which passed when Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, as they do once again.
While GOP House and Senate leaders are prioritizing extending the tax cuts, the massive price tag for extending them, which would likely even further balloon the nation’s $2 trillion deficit, is sparking divisions among congressional Republicans.
While AFP had its differences with Trump during his first administration, it was a major supporter of his tax cuts as well as his bipartisan criminal justice reform law.
But the group’s political wing, which has long backed fiscally conservative causes and candidates, endorsed and supported Trump rival Nikki Haley in late 2023 as the 2024 GOP presidential nomination race got started. Haley was the last remaining rival to Trump, but after she ended her White House bid, AFP concentrated its political efforts on down-ballot races.
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