It has been 18 months since the Republican Party pushed forward new tax policies that they claimed would usher in a new era of middle-class prosperity and corporate spending. That didn't happen. Instead, the new law primarily benefited the fabulously wealthy while blowing a $1.5 trillion hole in the federal budget. As it turns out, this is all pretty spot-on to what the actual experts on these things had predicted.
But 18 months is a long time to go between rounds at crippling the national budget to reward Republican campaign donors, so the Trump White House is now considering a new tax cut for the wealthy—one that they believe Trump can enact with the fat-fingered stroke of a pen, bypassing Congress entirely.
Bloomberg reports that the White House is contemplating a new rule or executive order changing capital gains rates to be indexed to inflation. That would amount to a tax break of several percentage points, more than 80% of which would go to the top 1%. (Less-wealthy Americans that own stocks through their retirement accounts would not see the cuts, because retirement accounts are not taxed in the same way.)
It's not a new idea. The last Republican administration contemplated doing the same thing, but determined they couldn't legally get away with it. As you can imagine, Trump's current advisers are considerably more eager to pull the trigger and dare the courts sort it out. Always Catastrophically Wrong Man Larry Kudlow is pushing for the change using the same promises of supposed "economic growth" that the previous tax cuts for the wealthy were supposed bring about, and Bloomberg reports that Trump himself is "deeply invested" in pushing it through.
How would slashing the capital gains tax through executive order affect Trump's own taxes? We don't know, as he's still refusing to give out that information. Why should capital gains on things like stock portfolios be indexed to inflation, even as Republicans insist that other rates affecting poorer Americans not be? Because screw you, that's why. Is there any limit to arch-conservative fervor for slashing taxes for the richest top sliver of Americans, time and time and time again?
Nope. Of course not. Who do you think pays for all those think-tanks and campaign runs?