By Nandita Bose

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – President Donald Trump capped a tumultuous first week back in office with a stop in Las Vegas on Saturday to talk about cutting the tax on tips, a 2024 campaign promise of his conducted by the gambling and hospitality center.

Since taking office on Monday, the new Republican president has rolled back many of the policies imposed by Democratic predecessor Joe Biden and moved to fulfill his promise to reform and shrink the federal bureaucracy.

During visits Friday to disaster areas in North Carolina and California, Trump pledged federal aid to help states recover from hurricanes and wildfires after floating an idea to shut down the Federal Emergency Management Agency. .

In Las Vegas, Trump is expected to discuss a less controversial pledge to end taxes on income from tips and overtime, a proposal he first made in June while courting state service workers in presidential swing in Nevada. The tip-heavy hospitality industry accounts for more than a fifth of jobs.

“Remember that little statement about tips?” Trump said in one of several inauguration day speeches on Monday. “Anybody remember that little statement? I think we won Nevada because of that statement.”

Michael McDonald, chairman of the Nevada Republican Party, said the idea is attractive to people in the state who face high prices for essential items such as food and gas.

“He cares about 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 welcome to Trump on Friday night.

Trump has vowed to pursue an aggressive tax-cutting agenda if re-elected, which could face some obstacles even in a US Congress controlled by his fellow Republicans.

The proposals Trump made on the campaign trail — from extending his 2017 tax cuts to eliminating taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security benefits — could add $7.5 trillion to the national debt next year. decade, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. .

Trump has pushed a plan that would apparently use revenue from higher tariffs on imported goods to help pay for extending trillions of dollars in tax cuts, an unprecedented a move likely to face opposition from Republican budget hawks concerned about the reliability and stability of tariff revenue.

Days before he returned to office, some of his Republican allies in Congress warned that Trump’s aggressive tax-cutting agenda could fall victim to signs of anxiety in the bond market.

In a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, House Republicans expressed concerns that the estimated $4 trillion cost over the next 10 years of extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts could harm the government’s ability to US to service $36 trillion in debt, which is growing at a rate of $2 trillion per year.