Donald Trump may have ditched the wall that he promised his anti-immigrant followers, and not followed through on “locking her up” for his misogynistic hordes, and missed on all ten of the ten things he promised to pass during his first 100 days. But there’s one set of constituents who Trump doesn’t intend to disappoint.
President Trump is pursuing a drastic cut in the corporate tax rate, a move that is likely to grow the national debt and breach a long-held Republican goal of curbing federal borrowing.
Despite massive supply side nonsense put forward from the White House, every estimate, including those from conservative think tanks, indicates that Trump’s tax plan would absolutely blow up the deficit, generating even greater losses than George W. Bush’s similarly unbalanced cuts. All to provide corporations that are sitting on already record high amounts of cash, even bigger piles of wasted wealth.
The president has instructed advisers to propose cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, according to White House officials who said they were not authorized to speak publicly about the plan. The rate reduction — which independent budget experts say could cost the federal government $2.4 trillion over a decade — is larger than what House Republicans had proposed in their own plan.
Since Trump’s tax plan gives this enormous gift to corporations, Republicans are arguing that another source of revenue is needed. Which means, of course, consumers.
A House Republican tax plan endorsed by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), for example, would raise nearly $1 trillion by imposing a new tax on imports, frequently referred to as a border-adjustment tax.
But Trump isn’t supporting this move by Ryan because, while most of the burden would fall on end users, some would land on the decks of corporations. And some is too much.
Republicans are in need of a way to extract a vast amount amount from the people who have the least, so they can give more to those who already have it. It’s what Republicans have always done, just more so. And this time, there may simply not be resources left in the 98 percent to gift the 2 percent the way Trump has promised.
Unlike every other challenge, where Trump has turned and run from the first sign of resistance, he seems determined to hang in there for team corporate.
“President Donald Trump has ordered White House aides to draft a tax plan that slashes the corporate tax rate to 15% even if that means a loss of revenue and exacerbating the procedural and partisan hurdles he faces in search of his first major legislative victory, according to people familiar with the directive.”
To give trillions to corporations, Trump is willing to blow up the budget and wreck Congress so that other priorities are abandoned.
Or at least, that’s what he says. What history says is this: Donald Trump will blink.