President Donald Trump said he would continue lowering taxes if he wins his reelection battle on Nov. 3, saying that those cuts would apply to middle-income Americans and businesses.
“We’re going again for a big middle-income tax cut. [Democrats] want to raise taxes, and they want to raise it on nonsense,” Trump said Wednesday. It’s not clear exactly what it would include, but the president previously said he would cut the top capital gains tax rate from 20 percent to 15 percent.
“We are going to be cutting taxes further, and that includes business taxes, but it includes especially middle-income taxes,” he said. “We are low taxes. We are going to continue to be low taxes.”
In 2017, Trump presided over the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017. During his first debate with Democratic nominee Joe Biden, he frequently highlighted its passage.
Trump on Wednesday spoke from the White House Rose Garden to the Economic Clubs of New York, Pittsburgh, Florida, Washington, Chicago, and Sheboygan, Wisconsin, telling them that the 2020 election is “a choice between a socialist nightmare and the American dream.”
Biden, meanwhile, is proposing between $3 trillion and $4 trillion in tax increases over 10 years, saying that he would start individual increases on individuals who earn more than $400,000 per year.
“I will raise taxes for anybody making over $400,000,” Biden told ABC News in August. “Let me tell you why I’m going to do it. It’s about time they start paying a fair share of the economic responsibility we have. The very wealthy should pay a fair share—corporations should pay a fair share.”
In their debate, Biden also said he would roll back Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and raise the corporate tax rate.
During the vice-presidential debate, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Vice President Mike Pence grappled over taxes, with Pence repeatedly saying that a Biden administration would raise them.
“America, you just heard Senator [Kamala] Harris tell you—on day one—Joe Biden is going to raise your taxes,” Pence said last week. Harris asserted that Biden’s plan is to tax Americans who make more than $400,000. “Joe Biden said twice last week that he was going to repeal the Trump tax cuts,” Pence said, adding that those tax cuts provided thousands of dollars per year to families.
“Biden will not raise taxes on anyone who makes less than $400,000 a year, he has been very clear about that,” Harris responded. “Joe Biden will not end fracking. He has been very clear about that. Joe Biden is the one who, during the Great Recession, was responsible for the Recovery Act that brought America back and now the Trump-Pence administration wants to take credit.”
The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to raise or lower taxes, so Trump’s and Biden’s economic agendas will ride on what party controls the House and the Senate.
