I have been hammering Donald Trump to do something that would make a difference to flip the momentum back to the GOP, and he just did it.
Trump is proposing a new law that would eliminate income taxes for people who make under $150,000 per year.
If you want to make a difference for average Americans, this is the best way you can do it.
If you recall, during the 2016 GOP primary cycle, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was touting the idea of doing your taxes on a postcard, but it was not an original concept.
The first time I ever heard this mentioned was years before, in one of Trump’s books. I was dating a Cruz supporter at the time, and I remember showing her the book to steal the senator's thunder. Cruz may have brought the idea mainstream, but he was not the first person to think of it.
At the time, Cruz stated, “However, the most immediate, effective way to implement comprehensive tax reform is to pass a simple flat tax -- so simple that Americans can file on a postcard.”
He continued, “This should be the starting point for reform, and once it’s in place we should pursue a Fair Tax.”
Ever since Trump’s first administration, Democrats have claimed that Trump’s tax breaks only helped the top 1%, which is just not true.
Taxpayers in all brackets benefited from Trump's initiative, but people in higher tax brackets had a larger overall dollar benefit because of the sheer amount of money they made.
Democrats claimed that the tax cuts were not really a cut at all, penalizing those making $24,000 a year or less by about $1,200.
Those on the left were very crafty in how they presented their argument, regularly throwing around numbers rather than percentages. When you hear folks say that people making over $1 million will see $114 billion in tax cuts, but they avoid breaking it down to the percentage each person will save, you know that games are being played with the numbers.
For middle- and low-income families making under $150,000 a year, those at the top of that bracket are paying somewhere between 16% and 19% in income tax. That is likely enough to cover a full year of rent or mortgage payments. That is what I call a difference maker, and that is what Trump is proposing.
Trump, on his ideal income tax system, stated, "Whether you get rid of it or just keep it around for fun or have it really low, much lower than it is now, but you won't be paying income tax.”
The president believes he can accomplish this with his tariffs, stating, "It's time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before. Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich foreign nations, we should be tariffing and taxing foreign nations to enrich our citizens."
You want to get the American people behind tariffs? Make this plan happen. Most of us would gladly pay a few dollars more at checkout and have an extra $15,000 to $20,000 put in our bank account. There is no way the increase in consumer prices resulting from tariffs would offset that amount of money. Trump still has to figure out a way to make this work, but I can tell you right now, if the plan is reasonable, I would 100% support it.
