Tax cuts or doom

State GOP boss’ warning to floundering Trump

ALBANY — State GOP Chairman Ed Cox called enactment of a tax cut plan by the end of the year “make or break” for President Trump and the Republicans. Cox, a vocal Trump supporter, said if Congress can’t enact a tax cut plan, it will hurt the GOP heading into the midterm congressional and state elections next year even more than the failure to deliver on a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare.

“President Trump was elected on huge economic unease about good jobs in this country, an issue that upstate New York particularly faces,” Cox said. “The key to that is good solid tax cuts that make the economy grow.”

If it doesn’t get done, Cox said, “the Republican Party and its President will not do the job that we were elected to do. It will rightfully make it tough for us next year in the general elections.”

Cox said any tax cut plan should focus largely on the middle class and small businesses.

He conceded such plans will help balloon the national deficit, but believes the economic growth it will generate will, in large part, help alleviate that.

Along with a federal tax cut, Cox also called for a state plan to reduce taxes.

“I’m calling for pro-growth tax cuts instead of Gov. Cuomo’s politically driven corporate welfare using taxpayer funds,” he said.

Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi argued that state taxes under the governor are at their lowest levels in decades.

“Ed (Nixon) Cox can’t stop the lies,” Azzopardi said, referencing the GOPer’s father-in-law, the late former President Richard Nixon. “He supports Trump trickle-down and cutting taxes for millionaires — that’s anti-New York economic policy to match their anti-New York racial policy.” A recent meeting between Trump and top conservative donors like hedge-funder Robert Mercer to discuss the White House agenda moving forward has left some New York Democrats “salivating.”

The Dems say they will seek to use Mercer — who they expect to help pump millions of dollars into the 2018 New York gubernatorial, congressional and state legislative races through personal and super PAC donations — as a “bogeyman” in heavily blue New York. “The fact that the Mercer family is publicly part of Trump’s kitchen cabinet while he’s so toxic in New York has us salivating,” said one Democratic insider. “Any Republicans who get their support are going to be tarred.”

State GOP spokesman Jessica Proud broke into laughter when told of the comments.

“It’s truly the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Proud said. “(The Mercers) are not a household name. If that’s their strategy, awesome. They’re using the Mercers, we’ve got (House Democratic Leader) Nancy Pelosi. Let’s see who does better.” If a reunification of the fractured state Senate Democrats is to happen, mainline Dems must manage expectations by the left of a progressive free-for-all, a pivotal breakaway Democrat says.

“All Democrats are not the same,” said Sen. Diane Savino of Staten Island. “Every district is not the West Side of Manhattan.”

Savino said the mainline Democrats and their allies on the left need to understand that lesson or be doomed to repeat the failures of 2009-10 — the last time the party had Senate control.

“If you want to keep the majority, you can’t push suburban legislators too far to the left. That’s how we blew it the first time,” she said.

Since Trump’s election, progressive groups have upped the pressure on the eight-member Independent Democratic Conference to unify with the mainline Dems in a leadership coalition.

Senate Democratic spokesman Mike Murphy had no comment.