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WASHINGTON (AP) The tax overhaul of 2017 amounts to a high-stakes gamble by Republicans in Congress: That slashing taxes for corporations and wealthy individuals will accelerate growth and assure greater prosperity for Americans for years to come.

The risks are considerable.

A wide range of economists and nonpartisan analysts have warned that the bill will likely escalate federal debt, intensify pressure to cut spending on social programs and further widen America’s troubling income inequality.

Congress is expected to vote this week on the bill, the most far-reaching rewrite of the U.S. tax code since 1986. It would shrink corporate taxes, prod companies to return trillions in profits they’ve kept overseas, cut taxes on wealthy estates and drop tax rates — but only temporarily — for individuals.

It puts its faith in the prospect that lower taxes will make corporate America turn more generous and spend more expansively.

“This is a bet on our country’s enterprising spirit, and that is a bet I am willing to make,” Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker said Friday after dropping his previous opposition to higher deficits and throwing his support behind the bill.

In pushing the plan through a divided Congress — no Democrat in either the House or Senate backs it — Republicans have insisted that the economic virtues they envision from the tax-cut package outweigh the risks that many analysts are warning about.

“This is going to be one of the greatest gifts for the middle income people of this country that they’ve ever gotten for Christmas,” President Donald Trump said Saturday as he prepared to leave the White House for the weekend. “Jobs are going to come pouring back into this country.”

The legislation would add at least $1 trillion to federal deficits that were already sure to swell as baby boomers retire and draw on Social Security and Medicare. And the tax-cut’s gains are skewed toward wealthy taxpayers, who historically are less inclined to spend additional money than are households of more modest means. One likely result is that corporations and rich individuals will widen the economic gap between themselves and everyone else.

Even the political calculus for the Republicans looks questionable: A Quinnipiac University poll found that American voters, convinced that the benefits will flow mainly to corporations and the wealthy, oppose the plan 55 percent to 26 percent.

But Republicans have characterized the brew of tax cuts as an economic elixir. The job market appears healthy. But the pace of economic growth, though it’s perked up the past two quarters, has been underwhelming for years. From 2010 to 2016, U.S. growth averaged 2.1 percent a year, a pittance compared with the 3.2 percent average annual growth from 1948 through 2016.