The Tax Cut Tour: Trump targets voters with more breaks

• Philip Wegmann writes that all of Trump’s proposed tax slashing has left some heads reeling.

In Michigan, during remarks before the Detroit Economic Club, former President Trump vowed to make interest on car loans fully tax deductible, a proposal that would be a boon to the automobile industry in Michigan and elsewhere – and which is merely the latest promise in what has become a pattern.  

Trump told voters in Nevada that he would eliminate taxes on tips earlier this summer. The Republican nominee followed that up this fall by promising to restore the state and local tax deduction, a key tax deduction that he and congressional Republicans eliminated while president and which, if restored, would be a benefit to suburban voters in states like New York, New Jersey, and California. Trump has also called for making Social Security benefits tax-free.

Seniors, who would benefit from that last proposal, live, well, everywhere. While Americans over 50 are the largest voting bloc, the beneficiaries of the latest tax slash are much smaller: Citizens living abroad.

“I support ending the double taxation of overseas Americans,” Trump told The Wall Street Journal Thursday, a reference to his plan to lower the tax burden of the small number of citizens who pay both federal taxes and taxes to the foreign government where they reside. As the Journal reported, it was a play to win support from an often-overlooked group of voters.

All the proposed tax slashing has left some heads reeling.

“Trump’s just throwing darts at the populist-pandering dart board. Economic coherence be damned,” said Brian Riedl, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a center-right think tank. The politics, meanwhile, are undeniable. Vice President Kamala Harris found herself playing catch up when she unveiled a similar “no tax on tips” proposal.

Republicans complain that Harris is playing “copy-cat.” Her proposal does differ from that of Trump, however, in that she supports eliminating taxes on tips only for those making under $75,000 and would pair that reform with legislation boosting the minimum wage for tipped workers from $2.13 an hour to $7.25. She has also slammed Trump’s tariff proposal as “a sales tax on the American people.”

From the call to make auto loans tax-deductible to the tipping proposals, Indiana Rep. Jim Banks sees a through line: a focus on blue-collar voters. “President Trump understands the importance of working-class voters to our party,” Banks, a Trump ally and candidate for Senate, told RealClearPolitics. He said Republicans on Capitol Hill ought to follow the former president’s lead “and give middle-class families a tax break by making the TCJA’s individual rate cut permanent before the end of next year.”

Promises come easy during election season. Actual strategies to get them into law are rare on the campaign trail. The question for all politicians: How will they deliver once in office?

Asked how the former president would replace revenue lost to tax cuts, Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt cited his track record rather than any specific legislative strategy. “President Trump delivered on his promise to cut taxes in his first term,” she said. “He can be trusted to deliver on these promises in his second term.”

Trump has already vowed that income from new tariffs would make up the federal revenue lost by tax cuts. Harris, meanwhile, has long argued, like most Democrats, that the rich ought to pay “their fair share.” Critics looking for technical specifics will find those broad answers unsatisfying, too.

“If you demand all your current federal spending – or more – but also believe all taxes are illegitimate, Trump is your guy,” Riedl said before noting how Trump once described himself as “the King of Debt.”

An estimate released by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that Trump’s plans could add as much as $15 trillion to the national debt over a decade, while Harris’ proposals would add nearly $8 trillion. No president from either party since Bill Clinton was in the Oval Office has taken the national debt and annual budget deficits seriously.

Paul Winfree, who served as Trump’s deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council, told RCP that the former president “understands something important that all the tax nerds do not.”

While wonks in the Washington beltway have often criticized Trump’s instinct to slash taxes left and right, Winfree, now the president and CEO of the Economic Policy Innovation Center, said the candidate realizes “that you will pay a price for taking away benefits that people currently have, but that you’re not rewarded for allowing people to keep what they have either.”

“So he’s looking to build on the Trump tax cuts,” Winfree said of his old boss, “which will be essential to maintaining a political coalition necessary to their success.”

The election, meanwhile, is in less than a month. Tax Day, more than six.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.