Taxes

John Cornyn (R)

Cornyn voted for the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and has consistently pushed to make the individual rate cuts permanent before they snap back in 2025. As a senior Finance Committee Republican, he prioritizes making 100% bonus depreciation and R&D expensing permanent and supports permanent estate-tax repeal. He has filed multiple HSA-expansion bills and opposes raising the corporate rate, restoring the carried-interest framework, or expanding the Child Tax Credit beyond 2017 levels. He has been notably skeptical — though rarely openly oppositional — of the broadest Trump tariffs, framing them as a tax on Texas exporters in private remarks reported by the Texas Tribune Q&A. He has not endorsed Trump's 50-year mortgage proposal and has expressed concern about ballooning federal debt from extending the tax cuts without offsets.

James Talarico (D)

Talarico's tax plan splits into two distinct strands. On closing loopholes, he would end the carried-interest loophole, roll back tax breaks that let large corporations pay $0 in federal tax, end 'buy, borrow, die' step-up-basis loopholes, and eliminate the Social Security tax cap above $400K. On new rate hikes and new taxes, he would raise the corporate tax rate, raise capital-gains taxes on billionaires, raise the tax on corporate stock buybacks, and add a special tax on corporations paying executives more than 250x their median worker's salary; he has called publicly for taxing 'trillionaires out of existence.' On tax cuts, he would expand the Child Tax Credit and EITC for working families and small businesses, and repeal the Trump tariffs.

Taxes

John Cornyn (R)

James Talarico (D)

Sources