In Donald Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns, voters knew effectively nothing about what the Republican would do after Election Day. There were assorted slogans and vague assurances, but Team Trump had no meaningful agenda and no platform.
As the 2024 cycle takes shape, conditions have changed — at least a little. We’ll never reach a point at which the former president sits down with a bunch of wonks, explores the granular minutiae of governing solutions formulated in a set of white papers, but Trump and his advisers have pulled back the curtain a bit, offering the public at least some idea of what to expect if he’s given a second term in the White House.
We know, for example, that the Republican wants to explore new ways to consolidate power in the Oval Office, ending key agencies’ independence. We also know that Trump wants to impose new restrictions on higher education, start a trade war, prosecute his perceived political enemies, go after trans people, and consider a military offensive in Mexico.
But let’s not forget the granddaddy of them all: tax breaks for the wealthy and powerful. The Washington Post reported:
As Donald Trump widens his lead over other Republican candidates in the GOP primary, the former president’s closest economic advisers are plotting an aggressive new set of tax cuts to push on the campaign trail and from the Oval Office if he wins a second term. Trump and his advisers have discussed deeper cuts to both individual and corporate tax rates that would build on his controversial 2017 tax law.
As part of their ineffective tax package, Republicans cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. According to the Post’s report, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, members of Team Trump are prepared to slash it again, “potentially to as low as 15 percent.”
There’s no reason to believe this would be a political winner for the former president or his party. Voters did not support corporate tax breaks in 2017, and there’s zero polling evidence to suggest the electorate is looking for more tax cuts now.
But Team Trump has made it a priority anyway.
Taking a step back, there are a couple of broader takeaways to keep in mind. The first is that there’s occasional chatter among Republican officials about the GOP positioning itself as the party of working-class voters. Such talk has long been ridiculous, but the focus on another round of regressive corporate tax breaks obliterates the idea altogether. But the other angle of interest is the degree to which Democrats are spoiling for this fight. Within hours of the Post publishing its article, Ammar Moussa, a spokesperson for Biden-Harris 2024, issued a written statement to the press: “Donald Trump is plotting to bring back the failed, trickle-down policies of his first term that lined the pockets of his ultra-wealthy friends and created incentives for corporations to ship American jobs overseas. This is the story of the Trump economy — blowing up the deficit to help out his wealthy friends at the expense of hardworking Americans and their families. Bidenomics is undoing the damage Trump wrought by growing the economy from the bottom up and middle out, creating millions of middle-class jobs, lowering costs for families and all the while ensuring the ultra-wealthy pay their fair share. That’s a contrast we’re more than willing to take going into 2024.”
There are plenty of issues that Democrats will be eager to talk about over the next year or so, but the party knows full well that Trump and the GOP suffered in the polls after ramming through a package of unpopular and unnecessary tax cuts in 2017, and Democrats would love little more than a spirited debate over the need — or lack thereof — of corporate tax breaks ahead of Election Day 2024.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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