By Nandita Bose
LAS VEGAS (Reuters) -President Donald Trump capped a frenzied first week back in office with a stop in Las Vegas on Saturday to talk about cutting taxes on tips, a 2024 campaign promise he made in the gambling and hospitality hub.
Trump took the stage before cheering supporters at the Circa Resort and Casino (EPA:CASP) in front of a large banner reading "No Tax on Tips" and said economic confidence was soaring in the United States.
"America's decline is over," he said at the start of his remarks, echoing themes from his inauguration remarks earlier in the week.
Since taking office on Monday, the new Republican president reversed a myriad of policies put in place by Democratic predecessor Joe Biden and moved to fulfill his vow of remaking and shrinking the federal bureaucracy.
In visits on Friday to disaster areas in North Carolina and California, Trump pledged federal aid to help those states recover from hurricane and wildfires after floating an idea to shutter the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
In Las Vegas, Trump doubled down on a less controversial proposal: his pledge to end taxation of income from tips, a proposal he first made in June as he courted service workers in the presidential swing state of Nevada. The tip-heavy hospitality industry comprises more than a fifth of all jobs in the state.
"Your tips will be 100 percent yours," Trump said, joking that he would go after the same workers for not reporting their tipped income over the last 10 years.
Trump said that a "young beautiful waitress" had given him the idea for the policy proposal and joked that that was the extent of his research on the issue.
His Democratic opponent in 2024, former Vice President Kamala Harris, also pledged to do away with taxes on tips, following in Trump's footsteps. Her campaign said the proposal would require legislation by Congress. Trump won the state.
Michael McDonald, Nevada Republican Party chairman, said the idea is attractive to people in the state who are facing high prices for essential goods like food and gas.
"He cares about the no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security. That was something that we brought to the community, and everybody loved it because we’re all hurting," McDonald told local television after welcoming Trump on Friday night.
The proposals Trump made on the campaign trail - from extending his 2017 tax cuts to abolishing tax on tips, overtime and Social Security benefits - could add $7.5 trillion to the nation's debt over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Trump is pushing a plan to explicitly use revenue from higher tariffs on imported goods to help pay for extending trillions of dollars in tax cuts, an unprecedented shift likely to face opposition from Republican budget hawks concerned about the reliability and durability of tariff revenue.
Days before he returned to office, some of his Republican allies in Congress warned that Trump's aggressive tax-cut agenda could fall victim to signs of worry in the bond market.
At a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, Republicans in the House of Representatives aired concerns that the estimated $4 trillion cost over the next 10 years of extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts could undermine the U.S. government's ability to service its $36 trillion in debt, which is growing at a pace of $2 trillion a year.