Join tax reform effort: Trump
‘Bring back Main Street’
SPRINGFIELD, Missouri, Aug 31, (Agencies): US President Donald Trump turned his populist rhetoric to tax reform, calling for “pro-American” business tax cuts as a way to create jobs and telling Congress that it needs to deliver.
Speaking at a manufacturing company in Springfield, Missouri, Trump called on Democrats to join his tax overhaul effort, which he said would also cut taxes and simplify the sprawling US tax code for the middle class. But he offered few specifics, and tax reform will be an uphill task in Congress.
“We must reduce the tax rate on American businesses so they keep jobs in America, create jobs in America and compete for workers right here in America,” Trump said in his first presidential speech specifically on tax reform, one of his key 2016 campaign issues.
Both congressional Democrats and Republicans say tax reform is needed but the Republican goal of enacting legislation this year faces a battle in Congress, which has already failed to deliver on healthcare reform sought by Trump.
Trump reiterated his longstanding call for slashing US corporate tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent at a time when lawmakers believe they could be lucky to bring it down to 25 percent.
Independent analysts and lobbyists are increasingly pessimistic that Congress can act by the end of 2017, and some believe final tax legislation could be more like a straight tax cut than a reform.
“I don’t want to be disappointed by Congress. Do you understand me?” Trump said to cheers. “I think Congress is going to make a comeback, I hope so. I’ll tell you what, the United States is counting on it.”
Trump said business tax cuts would lead to higher wages for workers by boosting economic growth and making American companies more competitive, an argument Democrats dismiss as more of the “trickle-down” economics that they blame for leaving workers behind in recent decades.
Winner
“If President Trump’s previous tax plans are any indication, the wealthy and big corporations will be the ultimate winner,” Representative Richard Neal, the top Democrat on the taxwriting House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement.
There has been no comprehensive overhaul of the tax code since 1986.
Trump push to overhaul the nation’s tax system by pledging Wednesday that the details-to-come plan would “bring back Main Street” by reducing the crushing tax burden on middleclass Americans, making a populist appeal for a proposal expected to heavily benefit corporate America.
Trump said his vision for re-writing the tax system, a key campaign pledge, would unlock stronger economic growth and benefit companies and workers alike. He promised it would be “pro-growth, pro-jobs, pro-worker and pro-American.”
True to form for the president, Trump dangled the prospect of the “biggest ever” tax cut and warned that without it, “jobs in our country cannot take off the way they should. And it could be much worse than that.”
Trump, who rarely travels to promote his policy agenda, chose to debut his tax overhaul pitch before employees at a manufacturing plant in Springfield, Missouri, a community known as the birthplace of Route 66, one of the nation’s original highways, and one known as America’s Main Street.
“This is where America’s Main Street will begin its big, beautiful comeback,” the president declared.
The economy has been a bright spot for Trump’s troubled presidency, with unemployment rates falling and growth rates reaching their fastest clip in over two years.
Shortly before Marine One lifted off from the South Lawn of the White House, news came that economic growth had reached Trump’s target of three percent in the second quarter.
“I happen to be one that thinks we can go much higher than three percent,” Trump said, welcoming the news.