Grover Norquist and 35 Conservative Groups Urge Trump to Let ACA Tax Credits Expire While Opposing Corporate Tax Credit Expirations

On September 26, 2025, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform led a coalition of 35 conservative organizations—including Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity—in sending a letter to President Trump urging him to let enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) tax credits expire in December 2025. The letter characterized the subsidies as ‘Biden COVID credits’ and urged Trump to ‘continue fighting the radical Left’s agenda’ by allowing them to lapse.

The expiration would constitute a massive effective tax increase on 24 million Americans: premiums would increase by 114% on average, and the Congressional Budget Office estimates 4 million people would lose health insurance entirely. Over three-quarters of enrollees live in states Trump won in 2024, including farmers, small business employees, and gig workers without employer coverage.

The letter exposes profound hypocrisy in Norquist’s selective application of his ‘Taxpayer Protection Pledge’ that defines any tax increase as intolerable. Norquist has consistently argued that allowing corporate tax credits or subsidies to expire constitutes a ’tax increase’ that violates his pledge. As NPR documented, Norquist ‘has been able to define anything that takes away tax subsidies for corporations as a tax increase,’ requiring lawmakers to oppose eliminating corporate loopholes unless they simultaneously cut equivalent amounts elsewhere. His organization actively lobbies to make Trump’s 2017 corporate tax cuts permanent (which reduced rates from 35% to 21%) and supports cutting the rate further to 15% or below.

Yet Norquist now advocates for letting tax credits expire that directly benefit tens of millions of ordinary Americans—a position that represents the exact ’tax increase’ his pledge claims to prohibit, but applied selectively to burden working families while protecting corporate interests. Club for Growth president David McIntosh told reporters they ‘urged the Republicans not to extend those COVID-era subsidies,’ citing a ‘big spending problem’—while simultaneously supporting permanent corporate tax cuts that cost far more in federal revenue.

This selective enforcement demonstrates how Norquist’s anti-tax framework operates as a kleptocratic tool: ’tax increases’ are defined to prevent any reduction in corporate subsidies or restoration of corporate tax rates, while massive cost increases on regular Americans through benefit expiration are reframed as fiscal responsibility rather than the tax hikes they represent.