EXCLUSIVE — Sen. James Lankford, a member of Senate leadership who helped shepherd the Republican megabill to enactment, said that some of the business provisions will be a shot in the arm for the tech industry.

Hiring in professional, scientific, and technical services has been slowing for the past couple of years, with some in Silicon Valley blaming the loss of being able to deduct domestic research and development costs immediately. In an interview with the Washington Examiner, Lankford, also on the Finance Committee, said that he expects hiring to pick up because of a provision in the bill that will reinstate such deductions permanently.

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“I do think it will accelerate,” Lankford said.

Lankford said that he thinks increased U.S. innovation in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity will help, but he also emphasized that the legislation will re-shore some R&D to the U.S. from overseas.

The Senate bill permanently allows companies to immediately deduct domestic R&D costs, a policy that the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated amounts to a $141 billion tax cut over the next 10 years. It also permanently allows full expensing for new capital investment, such as factory machinery, and restores interest deductibility to help finance investments.

Overall, the Republican tax bill is noticeably less geared toward the supply-side orthodoxy that has dominated the GOP for a generation, but the business tax provisions are an exception and are considered to be the policies most likely to drive longer-run growth.

“Every company I talk to, they say leave the tax policy alone. I need to plan. This gives them the ability to be able to plan,” Lankford said. “So I think that is very significant for bringing stability and consistent growth in the economy.”

Lankford, the vice chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, introduced separate legislation before the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to make those business tax cuts permanent.

“Without question, the most pro-growth portion of the bill itself is the full-expensing piece and making that permanent. That is definitely the most pro-growth portion of the bill, and I think the longest-lasting effect will be the R&D, will be the interest deduction, will be the full-expensing,” Lankford said.

Lankford said that full-expensing and permanentizing the business tax provisions were key priorities for members of the Senate Finance Committee when drafting the megabill.

The House version of the legislation had initially included sunsets on the business tax provisions. The Oklahoma senator said that when the bill came to the Senate, making those provisions permanent was one of the biggest changes the upper chamber wanted to pursue, a point that was emphasized in talks with Trump and the White House.

“So we determined a year ago this was the right thing to do, and just never changed from that,” Lankford said.

The reconciliation legislative package came after months of, at times, contentious negotiations among Republicans and between the two chambers of Congress.

The bill cleared the Senate in a 51-50 vote. Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Susan Collins (R-ME) were the three Republican defectors. Because they voted against the bill, Vice President JD Vance had to intercede to cast the tiebreaking vote to move the bill forward.

With the successful passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was a significant win for House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, given the slim Republican margins, some Republicans have already suggested that Republicans take another bite of the apple and try to do another reconciliation bill.

While the GOP may attempt another package, Lankford predicted that any additional reconciliation bill would be less voluminous.

“I don’t anticipate any reconciliation bill would be coming of this size and complexity that we had with this one,” Lankford said, emphasizing just how complicated the bill, which not only contained tax provisions but also changes to things like Medicaid and food stamps.

“I joke with people back home, it’s not the one beautiful bill,” he said. “It’s the one big, beautiful bill based on the amount of complexity that’s in it, because there were just so many different elements.”

The Republican legislation also enhanced the child tax credit, although not to the degree that some populist social conservatives might have liked.

The child tax credit will increase from $2,000 to $2,200 per child. That’s down from $2,500 under the House version. However, the final version makes the increase permanent, whereas the House bill would have expired after 2028. Pro-family conservatives, including Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), wanted the credit as high as $5,000.

“The child tax credit itself and trying to be able to help and make sure that we are protecting it, it was set to expire and cut in half, we wanted to make sure that didn’t happen, and we did some additional tweaks on it,” Lankford said.

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Lankford, who is staunchly anti-abortion, said that he wants to make it so the child tax credit starts at pregnancy and not at birth.

“Anyone who thinks a child is not expensive during pregnancy has never had children, but that’s one that we were not able to get as well, but we’re going to try to get as much as we possibly can in that space,” Lankford said.