President Trump’s closing pitch to midterm election voters is like a cheesy infomercial: But wait! There’s more!
Republicans passed a big tax cut at the end of last year, with the expectation voters would reward them by voting overwhelmingly for Republicans in this year’s midterms. It hasn’t worked out that way. The tax cuts have turned out to be unpopular, because voters think they overwhelmingly favor corporations and the wealthy.
So Republicans tried again, with the House passing legislation in September that would make permanent tax cuts for individuals that are due to expire in 2025. But the bill would require 60 votes in the Senate, where Democrats have a say and there’s a bit of concern about the soaring national debt. So Tax Cut 2.0, as it’s known, has gone nowhere, and polls show Republicans are likely to lose control of the House in the November 6 elections.
So Trump has now rolled out Tax Cut 3.0—or maybe it’s just Tax Cut Desperation—which would cut taxes for “middle class workers” by an additional 10%. This idea got started as a Trump ad lib in a discussion with reporters after a Nevada rally on October 20. There was no proposal in Congress—where all tax changes must come from—for anything like it. But House Republicans clambered aboard, and the White House on October 31 put out a “joint statement with the House Ways and Means Committee Republicans” that extols the tax cuts already enacted and says, “We are not done yet.” Republicans now say they will take up Trump’s new 10% tax cut next year.
You get it, right? If you want more money in your pocket, vote Republican. If you want the government to have more of your money, vote Democrat.
Are voters really this gullible? Obviously we won’t know until the results are in on November 6, but the GOP pandering is so blatant that swing voters who will decide many key races might be as insulted as they are intrigued.
There are a few other problems with throwing tax cuts at voters. First, some voters actually care about fiscal sanity and realize the GOP tax cuts are already pushing federal deficits past $1 trillion per year. That means we’re basically borrowing the money today from future Americans—our kids and grandkids—who will have to deal with the debt in the future.
Second, additional tax cuts could be a hard sell even if the next Congress is controlled by the GOP. The do-over tax bill the House passed in September didn’t cut tax rates further; it only made individual tax cuts permanent, rather than temporary, so they’d have the same status as the steep business tax cuts that passed last year, and address an optics problem. A few Republicans are already jittery about the government’s shaky finances and don’t want to make it worse.
Finally, it’s not clear middle-class voters even want their taxes cut to nothing. Some voters actually understand that taxes pay for government services, and they’re willing to pay. There’s another solution for perceived unfairness in the system: Raise taxes on the wealthy and close the many loopholes that allow wealthy families—such as the Trumps—to evade taxes on much of their income. And Republicans aren’t about to do that. Taxes only go down in Trump’s GOP. Voters will now indicate whether they prefer another option.
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Rick Newman is the author of four books, including “Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success.” Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman