Trump mulls bypassing Congress to give rich Americans another $100 billion in tax cuts

In case America’s richest are contemplating that extra yacht or eyeing their eighth vacation home, Donald Trump is weighing padding their pockets with another $100 billion in savings through the capital gains tax. But in his quest to further enrich the rich, Trump wants to bypass Congress this time around, which would require his Treasury Department to do some double backflips. The New York Times writes:

The Treasury Department could change the definition of “cost” for calculating capital gains, allowing taxpayers to adjust the initial value of an asset, such as a home or a share of stock, for inflation when it sells. [...] Independent analyses suggest that more than 97 percent of the benefits of indexing capital gains for inflation would go to the top 10 percent of income earners in America.

Practically speaking, such an executive order would almost certainly be tied up in court for some time. But in terms of political calculus, it would give Trump yet another opportunity to remind voters of exactly whom he values and whom he’s working on behalf of: the mega-rich. 

That's a great idea just before the midterms since voters continue to feel totally uninspired by the GOP's $1.9 trillion tax giveaway to the rich last year. If Trump wants to pound that message home, more power to him. Hopefully, his crack team will do another hack job on the executive order keeping it in the headlines for months on end.