Trump Predicts ‘Major Middle-Income Tax Cut’ If GOP Wins House in 2020

Trump Predicts ‘Major Middle-Income Tax Cut’ If GOP Wins House in 2020
President Donald Trump makes his way to board Air Force One before departing from Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Nov. 4, 2019. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
Zachary Stieber
11/16/2019
Updated:
11/16/2019

President Donald Trump said there would be a major tax cut if Republicans win back the House in 2020.

The GOP held the House but lost majority in the 2018 midterms.

Speaking at the White House on Nov. 15, Trump said: “We’re going to be doing a very major middle-income tax cut, mostly devoted to middle income, who have really been big beneficiaries of the tax cut we did, which was the largest in the history of our country.”

“But we’re doing a major tax cut for the middle income, and that’ll be subject obviously to taking over the House because the Democrats like tax increases, not tax cuts,” he said.

Trump’s top economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, said this week that the administration is in the early stages of planning the next tax cut.

“We’re in very preliminary stages right now,” said Kudlow, the national economic council director. “This thing will not be completed for many months, as I say, it will be released as a strategic pro-growth document for the campaign. We want to see middle-income taxpayers get the lowest possible rates.”

Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow speaks to the media at the White House in Washington on Sept. 6, 2019. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow speaks to the media at the White House in Washington on Sept. 6, 2019. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
President Donald Trump exits the podium after speaking at the Economic Club of New York in New York City on Nov. 12, 2019. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump exits the podium after speaking at the Economic Club of New York in New York City on Nov. 12, 2019. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Trump in September said he was planning a major tax cut, telling a crowd in Baltimore: “We are working on a tax cut for the middle-income people. We’ll be announcing it some time in the next year, but it’ll be a very, very substantial tax cut for middle-income folks who work so hard.”

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Ways and Means, said at the House Republican Conference member retreat, where Trump spoke, that federal revenues are high and corporate tax income keeps growing because more people are working and their wages are higher.

He also said that tax cuts wouldn’t happen if Republicans don’t win back the House.

“We believe that there’s an opportunity for more middle-class tax cuts, and I’ve worked with the White House on the middle-class tax cut plan,” Brady said.

“There are a number [of], we think, pretty exciting proposals that when President Trump is reelected, and Republicans take back control of the House, we are prepared and ready.”

Trump’s original tax cuts, passed in late 2017, reduced the individual income rate, cut the corporate income tax rate, and doubled the child tax credit, among other things.

The cuts led to the average American paying about 25 percent less in taxes, according to data from H&R Block.