GOP Wants To Loot One More Tax Cut On Way Out The Door

Also trying to make "Fetch" happen

Donald Trump has a thrilling idea that's sure to guarantee Republican victories in this fall's midterms. No, not a pledge to take Muslims' kids away sell them to coal companies; that one only polled half as well with Republican voters as it did with Stephen Miller. Instead, Trump took the opportunity of the six-month anniversary of the Big Fat Tax Cuts for Rich Fuckwads to propose another round of tax cuts, because everyone except for an elitist majority of Americans loved the first Big Fat Tax Cut so much.

Trump offered the detail-free pitch in his big dumb interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, which aired Sunday. After she asked if the economy needed even more stimulus to make America even greaterer (it's a perfectly cromulent word), Trump was so happy to get right to his big plans for Big Fat Tax Cut II: Coal-Powered Boogaloo. 

We're doing a phase two. We'll be doing it, probably, in October, maybe a little sooner than that and it'll be more of a middle class, we did a lot for the middle class, but this will be even more aimed at the middle class.

One of things that we're thinking about is bringing the 21 percent down to 20, and then for the most part, the rest of it would go right to the middle class. It's a great stimulus, and one of the things I'm doing that you've been reporting on --

Unfortunately, after Trump started that aside about Fox Business's wonderful reporting, he completely sidetracked himself, praising his enormous expansion of the steel industry that isn't actually happening . Trump never got back to his his thrilling plans for deeper tax cuts that this time would definitely help the middle class, because a 21 percent corporate tax rate may not have helped the middle class, but a 20 percent rate would magically do that, because didn't you just hear him say "middle class"?

But if he had gotten back to the idea of Tax Cuts Phase Two: The Space Force,     WaPo guesses maybe Trump might have signed on to a proposal by Rep. Kevin Brady, the Texas Republican who chairs the House Ways and Means Committee. Brady hopes to pass a whole bunch of neat ideas before the midterms, like making permanent the temporary reductions to individual tax rates in the Big Fat Tax Cut. Those temporary cuts were a bit of budget fuckery needed to pretend the overall bill wouldn't explode the national debt, but a lot of Republicans want to make them permanent like the corporate rates.

How any Republicans think they could actually get anything of the sort through Congress is anyone's guess; some tax-cutters hope the granny-starving House Budget Bill could be a vehicle for sneaking through another huge tax cut by reconciliation, so it couldn't die by filibuster in the Senate.

As WaPo notes, businesses haven't exactly been screaming for additional tax cuts, so it's not clear why Trump thinks another round of cash to the already rich would win more votes. As it is, most businesses -- and hey, Trump's own former economic adviser, Gary Cohn -- have been far more busy fretting that Trump's trade wars will wipe out all the big fat profits corporations have seen from the tax-cut gift. But maybe corporations will finally start all the capital expansions and massive hiring they kept promising -- and haven't delivered -- if only they get another tax cut, this time for sure. Surely they wouldn't just blow more tax cuts on pumping up their stock prices even further, would they?

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[ Vox / WaPo / Real Clear Politics / Foundation for Economic Education ]