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.
I’ve seen some better and more insightful communications advice from Andrew Levison before also. I mean the statement he’s got at the think is fine if a politician is literally held hostage and forced to say something about this song. By my gut political comms instinctive for anybody who isn’t in the business of feeding the right-wing BS machine is: never voluntarily discuss or bring up the song at all!
One of the more endearing things about Biden is when he tells reporters their questions are stupid. If an audience member finds that response offensive rather than endearing, they were a lost cause anyway. I found it endearing about Rumsfeld too, that he would call out reporters on dumb questions – even though Rumseld made a lot of bad decisions.
And if pinned down to talk about the lyrics, just refuse to play the game or understand the subtext.
Call these two: Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk Carjack an old lady at a red light
Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store… – the crimes and misdemeanors they are
This one: Cuss out a cop, spit in his face. — you shouldn’t do that do them. –and our Officers should respect all our citizens too
And this one: Stomp on the flag – call it constitutionally protected speech, but not a way to make friends or make your cause a political winner –
Agreed. Of course the debate is a trap. I am sure media figures and twitter users have editorialized about it. Have any Democratic elected officials or Party officials or Campaign operatives commented on it? If so, it is mistake. But that someone, somewhere in the country will complain about the songs lyrics and subtext in America is inevitable. It is also inevitable right-wing media will pounce on that fact, and identify any critic with any opposing Democratic candidate with the false equation of a left, progressive, or liberal, or Democrat person said something, those 4 words all mean the same thing, every Democratic candidate automatically believes in the same things anybody classified as left, progressive, or liberal ever said anywhere. That’s just life in a free country. Any communications strategy needs to work around that reality.