News & Insights

Shop floor manufacturers and NAM staff met with members of Congress yesterday and continue these meetings today on Capitol Hill to hammer home the importance of making the 2017 tax reforms permanent and getting a comprehensive reconciliation bill done now. House and Senate Republicans are working on a strategy for a tax package as part of a reconciliation bill that includes extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

• In its Morning Tax newsletter, POLITICO (subscription) reported on this week’s fly-in, naming the NAM “a powerhouse business lobby” meeting with several members of Congress as the 2025 tax bill continues to “get more intense.”

Why this is a critical moment: When the 2017 tax cuts were signed into law, “it was rocket fuel for manufacturing in America and made the U.S. economy more competitive on a global scale,” said NAM President and CEO Jay Timmons earlier this month.

• “That fuel is about to run out as key provisions have expired, and others are about to lapse. … We must ensure these historic, pro-growth manufacturing provisions are made permanent and even more competitive so manufacturers can plan, grow and succeed.”

“Exactly what the country needed”: Manufacturers traveled hundreds of miles from their shop floors to urge Congress to keep the rocket fuel for manufacturers and the American economy.

• “The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was huge for us,” said Tom Onsrud, CEO of the 51-year-old industrial CNC machine maker C.R. Onsrud, Inc., in Troutman, North Carolina. “It was rocket fuel. As soon as it passed, our backlog exploded. We started employing more people. We went from about 100 people to 220 people. Our floor space was maxed out. … It was exactly what the country needed.”
• One of the provisions, the immediate research and development tax credit, allowed the family-owned business to “expense equipment [costs] quickly,” Onsrud added. “That was huge for us.” That provision, however, expired in 2022.

“Vital to our company”: Stephen Bullock, president of concrete paving equipment manufacturer Power Curbers in Salisbury, North Carolina, is in Washington this week to make sure Congress knows just how important the tax reform measures have been to his small company.

• “We rely on them,” Bullock said. “We spend a lot of time and resources and money in research and development. Without [the tax provisions], it would be impossible for our company to support manufacturing. We’ve got to stay ahead of the game with new machinery, new offerings for our customers. So … anything we can do to realize those tax advantages sooner rather than later helps us very much from a cash-flow standpoint.”
• The TCJA “allowed us to expand and hire additional staff so that we [could] fund new programs, new machinery.”

“Tripled our business”: Steve Macias, co-owner of machining company Pivot Manufacturing, traveled from even farther away—Phoenix, Arizona—to make sure Congress heard what he had to say.

• “The tax reforms of 2017 … allowed us to grow our company in a way that we hadn’t [been able to] previously,” Macias told the NAM. “We were a small machine shop that did prototype and R&D work, and we’d been in business for 17 years. The tax cuts kind of gave us the kick … to take a leap and buy some production equipment, which has allowed us to virtually triple our business over the last eight years.”
•  “Legislators need to understand the impact of tax reform,” Macias went on. “I’m a machine shop in Phoenix, Arizona, and there are hundreds of machine shops across the U.S., but there are also thousands upon tens of thousands of small manufacturing companies that made the same decisions we did based on those tax policies.”