Trump Announces He's Planning a 'Very Major' Tax Cut for 'Middle Income'
President Donald Trump on Friday telegraphed his plans to press for a new tax cut aimed at the middle class, with one very important condition attached.
“We’re going to be doing a major middle-income tax cut if we take back the House,” Trump said during a White House event on health care.
Trump said that more details would emerge at a later date.
“But we’re going to be doing a very major middle-income tax cut, mostly devoted to middle income who have really been big beneficiaries of the tax cut we did, which was the largest in the history of our country,” he said.
Trump noted that a tax cut would require that Republicans resume control of the House, which they had when Congress passed a tax reform package in 2017.
“But we’re doing a major tax cut for the middle income, and that’ll be subject, obviously, to take — taking over the House, because Democrats like tax increases, not tax cuts,” Trump said.
Trump noted the headwind he faces in achieving his policy goals.
“And that’s one of the difficulties I have in Washington because I’ve taken on a lot of the establishment,” he said, according to a White House media pool report. “And a lot of the politicians are taken care of by the establishment, and they don’t like that I take on the establishment. But I’m taking it on for the consumer, for the American people.”
“And you haven’t seen anything yet. Things are going to happen that will be shocking. But there are people in Washington — as I say, there are people in the swamp that don’t like what I’m doing for that reason,” Trump said.
Earlier in the week, Trump spoke of the 2017 tax cut as a success but said there was more to do.
“We think we can bring it down still more,” Trump said in New York.
On Tuesday, Larry Kudlow, Trump’s National Economic Council director said “the president has asked me to pursue something called Tax Cuts 2.0.”
“We’re in very preliminary stages right now,” Kudlow told CNBC.
“This thing will not be completed for many months, as I say, it will be released as a strategic pro-growth document for the campaign. We want to see middle-income taxpayers get the lowest possible rates.”
The Washington Post had speculated that Trump’s tax proposal would include a 15 percent cut for the middle class.
Kudlow would not get into numbers, but spoke to Trump’s vision.
“[Trump] wants to afford as much relief and simplicity as possible for middle-income taxpayers,” he told The Post.
“We will gather together the best ideas from the Hill (Congress), the administration and outside folks to provide a significant new round of middle class tax relief,” Kudlow told reporters in September, according to Reuters.
A tax cut would place Trump in opposition to tax increases on upper-income Americans that have been proposed by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and others, to fund programs such as college loan forgiveness or “Medicare for All.”
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