General explanation.

JCS-5-05. Joint Committee Print. Provides an explanation of tax legislation enacted in the 108th Congress. Arranged in chronological order by the date each piece of legislation was signed into law. This document, prepared by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation in consultation with the staffs of the House Committee on Ways and Means and the Senate Committee on Finance, provides an explanation of tax legislation enacted in the 108th Congress. The explanation follows the chronological order of the tax legislation as signed into law. For each provision, the document includes a description of present law, explanation of the provision, and effective date. Present law describes the law in effect immediately prior to enactment. It does not reflect changes to the law made by the provision or subsequent to the enactment of the provision. For many provisions, the reasons for change are also included. In some instances, provisions included in legislation enacted in the 108th Congress were not reported out of committee before enactment. For example, in some cases, the provisions enacted were included in bills that went directly to the House and Senate floors. As a result, the legislative history of such provisions does not include the reasons for change normally included in a committee report. In the case of such provisions, no reasons for change are included with the explanation of the provision in this document. In some cases, there is no legislative history for enacted provisions. For such provisions, this document includes a description of present law, explanation of the provision, and effective date, as prepared by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation. In some cases, contemporaneous technical explanations of certain bills were prepared and published by the staff of the Joint Committee. In those cases, this document follows the technical explanations. Section references are to the Internal Revenue Code unless otherwise indicated.

The authors argue that, for 25 years, the U.S. has experienced a great wave of prosperity as a result of supply-side economics, or Reaganomics. They caution that Americans risk losing their high standard of living if the policies of the past are reversed by a Democratic president.

Conservative economists offer a well-informed defense of Trump’s approach to trade, taxes, employment, infrastructure, and other economic policies. Donald Trump promised the American people a transformative change in economic policy after eight years of stagnation under Obama. But he didn’t adopt a conventional left or right economic agenda. His is a new economic populism that combines some conventional Republican ideas—tax cuts, deregulation, more power to the states—with more traditional Democratic issues such as trade protectionism and infrastructure spending. It also mixes in important populist issues such as immigration reform, pressuring the Europeans to pay for more of their own defense, and keeping America first. Coauthors Stephen Moore and Arthur B. Laffer worked as senior economic advisors to Donald Trump in 2016. They traveled with him, frequently met with his political and economic teams, worked on his speeches, and represented him as surrogates. They are currently members of the Trump Advisory Council and still meet with him regularly. In Trumponomics, they offer an insider’s view on how Trump operates in public and behind closed doors, his priorities and passions, and his greatest attributes and liabilities.

"WE CAN'T TAX AND SPEND OUR WAY BACK TO THE GOOD TIMES." -- Arthur B. Laffer and Stephen Moore When Arthur B. Laffer spearheaded the theory of supply-side economics and became a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board, he took his place as an economic icon. More recently, he joined with Stephen Moore and Peter J. Tanous to write The End of Prosperity -- a clarion call delineating what is wrong with current political approaches to America's present economic challenges. Steve Forbes himself described The End of Prosperity as "brilliantly insightful," saying "READ IT -- AND ACT!" Now Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore follow the rousing success of The End of Prosperity with a book even more vital to America and Americans, delivering a plan that shows how our country can regain its lost prosperity. With the economy flat on its back, unemployment at a twenty-five-year high, and the housing default crisis still worsening, is this even possible? But America can once again become the land of economic opportunity, and this brilliant new book tells us exactly how. While President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama may hail from different parties, their response to the crisis has been strikingly similar. The Bush-Obama plan is a failure that has produced nothing except a cascade of trillions of dollars of debt. Is the situation hopeless? No, say Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore resoundingly, the situation is not hopeless. A return to prosperity is still entirely possible...if the correct strategies are followed. In The End of Prosperity, the authors primarily discussed how lower taxes are essential to economic growth. Now, in Return to Prosperity, they detail the other essential components: putting government at all levels on a low-fat diet; emphasizing debt reduction and retirement; and bringing back the investor class in America, where every American can "own a piece of the rock." In a time where most of the proposed solutions are fraught with peril, the argument provides a refreshing counterbalance. The Return to Prosperity is a prescription that gives America the fundamental tools it needs in order to set about recovery. This book is an urgently needed road map to renewed prosperity, and it is vital reading for anyone who worries that the current economy is faltering, with no clear plan articulated for recovery.