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Former Vice President Mike Pence is doubling down on his stance over whether he will support his 2016 running mate and former President Donald Trump.
After briefly running for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, Pence said he would be withholding support for Trump this time around, claiming that the former commander-in-chief’s policies are not conservative enough.
Pence, whose rapport with Trump deteriorated following the January 6 riots, during which the president criticized him for not returning disputed electoral slates to state legislatures in his capacity as president of the Senate, said that his announcement should not be surprising.
“It should come as no surprise that I will not be endorsing Donald Trump this year. I’m incredibly proud of the record of our administration. It was a conservative record that made America more prosperous, more secure, and saw conservatives appointed to our courts in a more peaceful world,” Pence said on Fox News.
Pence also said that Trump was shirking his conservative bona fides this time around, such as being committed to lowering the debt and the “sanctity of human life.”
He further remarked that Trump’s recent statements regarding China and his stance against banning TikTok in the U.S. represent a significant shift from his previous strong opposition to the Chinese-controlled social media platform during his presidency.
“What I’m going to spend the rest of this year on is talking about what we should be for. And that is the broad mainstream conservative agenda that’s defined our party and always made America strong and prosperous and free,” he said.
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Additionally, Pence recently disclosed that he is launching a $10 million campaign to extend the Trump-era tax cuts that will expire in 2019. He is doing this to urge conservatives to stay in the fight until the election in November.
Advancing American Freedom put out a 13-page plan on Thursday that makes its case to lawmakers and voters in key states, especially those that could decide who controls the Senate, the Associated Press reported.
The paper says, “We will be asking conservative leaders to join us in this fight.”
The group wants a long campaign that will last until 2025 when the White House and Congress will have to decide whether to make changes to the tax code or keep it the way it was when Republican Donald Trump was president in 2017. Many of the tax schemes for individuals will end after 2025 if nothing is done.
Lots of things will rest on which party runs the White House and the House and Senate.
President Joe Biden wants to keep the tax cuts for people making less than $400,000 a year but raise the business rate and tax the rich more. Trump, the likely Republican presidential candidate, also wants to keep the tax cuts for many families. However, he wants to lower the business tax rate from 21% to 20%.
This is what Pence said in a statement: “Washington has a spending problem, not a revenue problem.” “We have too much debt for our country to handle, and raising taxes on people is not the answer.”
“The federal balance sheet is in the red, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said this week, with spending outpacing revenue. That is in large part because of the COVID-era outlays, funding for the war in Ukraine, and the costs of Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs particularly to care for an aging U.S. population,” the AP reported.
Former Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey, who helped write the 2017 tax bill, is a big supporter of the foundation’s effort to keep the tax policies in place.
Congress has already started quietly working on tax policy before next year’s session, when they have to deal with the problem or risk letting some of the 2017 policies expire, which could mean higher taxes for many people.
