Rep. David Kustoff, a Republican member of the House committee that writes tax policy, introduced a bill Tuesday to lower taxes on small businesses in a bid to add tax policy to the GOP Homeland Security funding effort.
The Tennessee lawmaker first shared the bill with CNBC. It would increase the qualified business income deduction for noncorporate business owners to 23%, up from the 20% that was adopted as part of President Donald Trump’s 2017 overhaul of the U.S. tax code.
“This bill is good policy. It benefits small businesses across the country. It benefits family farms,” Kustoff, a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in an interview with CNBC.
Kustoff’s proposal, which has six House GOP co-sponsors, was introduced the same day Senate Republicans released legislative language kick-starting the process to fund part of the Department of Homeland Security, which has been shut down since February.
Republican leaders are planning to use the budget reconciliation process to fund the parts of DHS that Democrats have objected to in protest over what they consider overaggressive immigration enforcement policies. Budget reconciliation is a procedural tool used to pass spending-related matters that requires a simple 50-vote majority in the Senate, as opposed to the 60 votes normally required to overcome a filibuster. It’s the same process Republicans used in 2025 to pass their massive tax and spending package known as the “one big beautiful bill.”
