Shortly before the midterm elections, President Trump said his administration was working on a tax cut for middle class. “We are going to be putting in and are studying very deeply right now, around the clock a major tax cut for middle-income people,” Trump said at a rally in October. Few of his allies in Congress seemed to know what he was talking about, and Trump eventually said that there would be a “resolution” of some sort that would make his intentions clear. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin indicated that a tax plan would be released “shortly.” But the resolution and the tax plan never arrived, leading some to think that the whole thing may have been more a figment of the political imagination than a concrete legislative plan.
Mnuchin was asked about that tax cut in an interview with Bloomberg News Tuesday but declined to discuss it. “I’m not going to comment on whether it is a real thing or not a real thing,” Mnuchin said, adding, “I’m saying for the moment we have other things we’re focused on.” Those other things include fixing mistakes in the 2017 tax bill, such as the “retail glitch” that made renovations less attractive for restaurants and other retailers.
The House Rules Committee was expected to take up on Wednesday a new version of House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady’s (R-TX) tax bill, which contains various tax cuts, extenders and corrections, but no 10 percent cut for the middle class. The bill could get a vote on the House floor vote on Thursday. However, the bill is not expected to receive much if any attention in the Senate before the end of the year.
