The long-awaited Donald Trump tax reform plan is out and the salesmanship has already begun. When the president announced the plan, he said, “there’s never been tax cuts like we’re talking about.”
The new plan has just three different income-based tax brackets, down from the seven we have now. But so far, it’s unknown what the income thresholds would be.
The White House plan would double the standard deduction, at the same time eliminating personal exemptions and deductions for income and property taxes paid to local and state governments. Also gone in the new plan are the alternative minimum tax, the estate tax and some business deductions and tax credits. All that in addition to a drop in the corporate tax rate, from 35 to 20 percent, which Trump says will ultimately boost the economy.
In the end, the plan will cost 2.2 trillion dollars through the year 2027, according to the Washington-based policy group The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. And already, Democrats are fighting back – saying the plan settled the score.
Jim Braude is joined by Associated Press national political reporter Lisa Lerer, also a Nieman fellow at Harvard, and David Gergen, a CNN political analyst and past presidential advisor to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton.
