Trump to Unveil Tax Plan on Wednesday

[ClydeR]

I'm glad Trump figured out a way to do tax reform. Last week, his Treasury Secretary said they couldn't do it until August, and the week before that Trump said he must do health care reform first to generate tax savings for a tax cut.

WASHINGTON — President Trump promised on Friday that he would unveil a “massive” tax cut for Americans next week, vowing a “big announcement on Wednesday,” but he revealed no details about what is certain to be an enormously complicated effort to overhaul the nation’s tax code.

Mr. Trump offered his tax tease in an interview and again during remarks at the Treasury Department on Friday afternoon as he raced to stack up legislative accomplishments before his 100th day in office at the end of next week.

His announcement surprised Capitol Hill and left Mr. Trump’s own Treasury officials speechless as he arrived at the Treasury offices to sign directives to roll back Obama-era tax rules and financial regulations. Earlier in the day, when reporters asked Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, how far away a tax overhaul proposal was, he said he could not give an answer. “Tax reform is way too complicated,” he said.

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[ClydeR]

Mnuchin said that the tax plan would pay for itself when viewed through a "dynamic scoring" analysis, which accounts for the increased tax revenues that would be produced by higher growth prompted by the tax changes.

"We're looking for reforms that will pay for themselves with growth," Mnuchin said. "Under dynamic scoring, this will pay for itself, under static scoring, there'll be short term issues."

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As I'm sure you remember, I once did a whole thread about dynamic scoring.

[ClydeR]

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin wisely refused to say that Trump's tax plan would reduce the deficit. Instead, he said it would reduce the percentage of debt to GDP. Translated, that means it will increase the debt but increase economic growth more. The debt increase will be in the short term. The economic growth will be in the long term.

"This plan is going to lower the debt-to-GDP,” Mnuchin said. He said it would achieve this through closing loopholes and encouraging growth, even while rates come down on individuals and corporations. The plan, he said, will mean "Trillions of dollars in additional revenues,” though it's not clear how this will happen.

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Beyond that, he didn't say mnuch.