Donald Trump has been campaigning on a tax plan that would expand the federal deficit by $10 trillion over the next decade, while transferring 40 percent of that lost revenue to the one percent. By contrast, responsible Republican Marco Rubio offered a tax plan that also achieved the conservative goal of drastically increasing economic inequality, but did so at a cost of a mere $6.8 trillion — a price tag roughly equivalent to that of three and a half Iraq Wars.
Now that Trump is the nominee, however, he is starting to take tax policy as seriously as his Establishment co-partisans. Politico reports that the mogul has reached out to CNBC host Larry Kudlow and Heritage Foundation scholar Stephen Moore to help him draft a more sober plan for redistributing wealth upward. The two high priests of supply-side voodoo estimate that their alternative plan would expand the deficit by a piddling $3.8 trillion. The new proposal achieves such cost savings by increasing the tax burden of working-class households — Trump’s initial plan would have removed 33 million low-income Americans from the tax rolls entirely.
The new plan would also set the top marginal rate at 28 percent, up from 25 in the Donald’s first draft (and down from 39.6 under current law). But fear not, dear job creators: By soaking the poor, Kudlow and Moore not only manage to reduce the plan’s headline cost — they also finance a reduction in Trump’s proposed capital-gains rate. (The candidate has not yet committed to making any of these changes.)
Trump had previously promised that, under his plan, millions of middle-class families would receive a single-page form to send to the IRS, reading simply, “I win.” Kudlow and Moore do not specify whether their revised plan will retain this element in some manner. But as long as they add a picture of the Monopoly man to the form, it shouldn’t be out of place.
