At the beginning of the year, Republicans were hailing their tax cuts as the elixir that would rescue their flailing party. But in the special election in Pennsylvania’s heavily conservative 18th District, Republicans stopped talking about the tax cut and switched their closing message over to culture war hysteria, telling evidence that the tax cuts no longer played to their favor. When Democrat Conor Lamb won, President Trump retrospectively cast the outcome as a vindication of … the tax cuts. “The young man last night that ran, he said, ‘Oh, I’m like Trump. Second Amendment, everything. I love the tax cuts, everything.’ He ran on that basis,” Trump told a fundraiser. In fact, Lamb opposed the tax cuts as a “complete betrayal of the middle class.”
So, faced with this alarming setback, Republicans in Washington are now reconsidering their strategy. You’ll never guess what they came up with. Yes, another tax cut.
“We think even more can be done,” House Ways & Means Committee chairman Kevin Brady told Fox Business Network. “We want to make sure we’re encouraging innovation in America, we want to help families save for the long term.” Trump is excited. “It’s going to be something very special. Kevin Brady’s working on it with me,” he informed a group of executives (who would no doubt be delighted to learn that Trump wants them to claim an even larger share of the national income). It goes without saying that Lawrence Kudlow, the fanatical supply-sider and incoming head of the National Economic Council, also supports another tax cut bill.
The Republican Party’s one perfect policy idea for every situation turns out to be its preferred solution to this situation. Who could have guessed?
