Tax Reform Is Pure Trump

Rick Klein and Shushannah Walshe: “The tax reform push is shaping up as the purest slice of the Trump agenda yet, an effort, mostly independent of Congress, to distill the president’s ideas into a bold legislative concept. As such, it appears disjointed and haphazard, not to mention mixed up with the stop-and-start health care push and the lingering need to keep the government’s lights on. Wedged together are major corporate tax cuts, individual tax cuts, expanded deductions and even Ivanka Trump’s favored child-care tax credit.”

“The so-called ‘pay-fors,’ ideas including the border-adjustment tax, look like they’ll be left out. The package looks unlikely to comply with congressional budget rules, making the tricky politics even more complicated. As for deficit hawks, they’ll be left out or called out as this proceeds. But this is the big Trump play; that he and his team can sell reforms whose only ideology is President Trump himself.”