Tax cuts are always made more palatable by pretending they will expire. That way the total effect on the debt is minimized. Usually Congress just renews them a

Tax cuts are always made more palatable by pretending they will expire. That way the total effect on the debt is minimized. Usually Congress just renews them anyway, and it gets less attention than the original cuts. It's just preserving the existing incentive, and handwave over the fact that it still affects the deficit projections. The relationship between taxes and the deficit is complicated, but it's not that complicated. Deficit equals income minus expenditure. You can tell people that tax cuts pay for themselves, and they do seem content to keep believing it.