Republicans have both an arithmetic and a messaging problem as they try to enact Donald Trump’s second-term agenda via a giant budget-reconciliation bill. The former involves finding a way to pay for the $4 trillion-plus tax cuts Trump has demanded, along with a half-trillion or so in border security and defense spending increases. And the latter flows from the necessity of hammering popular federal programs (especially Medicaid) to avoid boosting budget deficits that are already out of control from the perspective of conservatives. This sets up Democrats nicely to deplore the whole mess as a matter of “cutting Medicaid to pay for tax cuts for Trump’s billionaire friends,” a very effective message that has vulnerable House Republicans worried.
To interrupt this line of attack while making the overall agenda slightly more affordable, anonymous White House sources lofted a trial balloon earlier this month via a Fox News report:
“White House aides are quietly floating a proposal within the House GOP that would raise the tax rate for people making more than $1 million to 40%, two sources familiar with discussions told Fox News Digital, to offset the cost of eliminating taxes on overtime pay, tipped wages, and retirees’ Social Security.
“The sources stressed the discussions were only preliminary, and the plan is one of many being talked about as congressional Republicans work on advancing President Donald Trump’s agenda via the budget reconciliation process.
“Trump and his White House have not yet taken a position on the matter, but the idea is being looked at by his aides and staff on Capitol Hill.”
The idea wasn’t as shocking as it might seem. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts reduced the top income-tax rate from 39.6 percent to 37 percent, so just letting that provision expire would accomplish the near-40 percent rate without disturbing other goodies for rich people in the 2017 bill like corporate-tax cuts, estate-tax cuts, and a relaxed alternative minimum tax for both individuals and corporations. One House Republican, Pennsylvania’s Dan Meuser, suggested resetting the top individual tax rate at 38.6 percent, still a reduction from pre-2017 levels but a “tax increase on the rich” as compared to current policies.
Crafty as this approach might have been as a way of boosting claims that Trump had aligned the GOP with middle-class voters (the intended beneficiaries of his recent tax-cut proposals) rather than the very rich, the idea of backing any tax increase on the allegedly super-productive job creators at the top of the economic pyramid struck many Republicans as the worst imaginable heresy. You could plausibly argue that total opposition to higher taxes, or even to progressive taxes, was the holy grail for the party, more foundational than any other principle and one of the remaining links between pre-Trump and MAGA conservatism. At the very idea of fuzzing up the tax-cut gospel, old GOP warhorses like Newt Gingrich and Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist arose from their political rest homes to shout: unclean! Gingrich called it the worst potential betrayal of the Cause since George H.W. Bush cut a bipartisan deficit-reduction deal in 1990 that included a tax increase.
As it happens, it was all a mirage. In virtual unison, both Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson have said a high-end tax cut won’t happen this year, as Politico reports:
“President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday came out against a tax hike on the wealthiest Americans — likely putting the nail in the coffin of the idea.
“Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he thought the idea would be ‘very disruptive’ because it would prompt wealthy people to leave the country. …
“Johnson separately knocked the idea earlier in the day, saying that he is ‘not in favor of raising the tax rates because our party is the group that stands against that traditionally.’”
Trump’s real fear may be that wealthy people would leave the GOP rather than the country. Many are already upset about Trump’s 19th-century protectionist tariff agenda and its effects on the investor class. Subordinating the tax-cut gospel to other MAGA goals might push some of them over the edge. As for Johnson, the Speaker is having to cope with the eternal grumbling of the House Freedom Caucus, where domestic budget cuts are considered a delightful thing in itself and the idea of boosting anyone’s taxes to succor the parasites receiving Medicaid benefits is horrifying.
If Trump’s “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill runs into trouble or if Democrats set the table for a big midterm comeback wielding the “cutting Medicaid to give billionaires a tax break” message, squashing the symbolic gesture of a small boost in federal income-tax rates for the wealthy may be viewed in retrospect as a lost opportunity for the GOP. For the time being, that party’s bond with America’s oligarchs and their would-be imitators stands intact.
An E-mail I got last week announced that the Democratic Party had “gone on offense” on national security. I was glad to read that and even sent them a few bucks. However, Democrats still haven’t caught on completely to what “offense” is. Carl Hulse’s article says Democrats have been advised to respond. Responding isn’t the same as going on offense. The Democrats plan to attack some of Bush’s failures and offer an alternative defense strategy. That’s competing, but not fully attacking. Offense is when one goes directly at his opponents position and the opponents position becomes the central issue. Offense is taking place when the opponent is on defense. To truly go on offense,the Democrats must attack Bush’s plan for his “war on terror.”
The Bush plan for his “war on terrorism” is beyond extreme and all the way through insane. Bush plans to install democracies in every country where terrorists might live. To do this, Bush is willing to prosecute a century of consecutive wars. Bush isn’t worried that the lives and money lost in the wars will exceed by numerous multiples anything the terrorists might do to us if we do nothing and leave our doors wide open. Bush isn’t worried about all the terrorism a century of wars might provoke. That’s because Bush is convinced that at the end of the century, the future Muslims of the Middle East will be so grateful for the democracy we’ll give them that they’ll overlook how we bombed their theocracy loving grandparents to get it. Bush believes they’ll be so grateful that they won’t want to attack the US anymore. That’s when Bush believes his “war on terrorism” will be a success. Our president has lost his mind.
Bush keeps saying Iraq is part of the war on terror. Democrats, ever on defense, insist that its not. Bush won’t say what exactly the “war on terror” is. Since Bush won’t define it, why don’t the Democrats define it for him? Yes, Iraq is part of the war on terror, and the 100 year crusade is Bush’s plan for the war on terrorism. Would the public like 100 years worth of Iraq wars? Let Bush defend scheme.
I haven’t heard a single Democrat talk about Bush’s war plan. Bush’s idea is so insane I can’t find a poll on it anywhere. America is pretending Bush’s idea doesn’t exist. And the Republicans get away with never mentioning Bush’s plan and instead are on offense calling we on the net and our favorite party “extremists.”
A quick analogy to Bush’s plan would be to try to keep your house safe by sending cops everywhere in the world to catch every burglar, and eliminating every social condition that might make someone want to become a burglar, and meanwhile, leaving your doors unlocked and all your money in cash on the dining room table. Democrats want go after terrorists and the countries that sponsor terrorist attacks. Democrats just want to lock the doors and put the cash in the bank too. The Democratic approach should be sold as a more rational and more effective approach. Effectiveness means future safety. Its time to go on offense.