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Less than a day away from unveiling their tax reform plan, Republicans still can’t decide what to name their bill. But President Donald Trump has a novel proposal: He wants to name it the “Cut Cut Cut Act,” according to a new report from ABC News.
Trump has apparently insisted on his idea, influenced in part by internal polling, Tara Palmeri reported for ABC News. House Republicans, however, don’t seem to love it — with House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Ways and Means Chair Kevin Brady pushing back.
But Ryan seemingly has no one but himself to blame. Figuring that Trump must know something about branding since he’s managed to stamp his name on a bunch of buildings and golf courses around the world, Ryan initially tasked Trump with naming the bill, a senior congressional aide told ABC News. The “Cut Cut Cut Act” was what he got.
The branding of this bill will likely be a big deal — because the actual details, which involve cutting taxes for the wealthy and possibly raising some taxes for the middle class, could prove very controversial. As Matt Yglesias explained for Vox:
Republicans envision an increase in the standard deduction and an increase in the child tax credit, both of which would help many middle-class families.
The basic problem, though, is that if you want to do a big tax cut for business owners and heirs to multimillion-dollar estates, and you want to offset it with countervailing tax increases, then you are talking about raising taxes on the middle class in order to finance an unpopular tax cut for the rich. There’s no clear path out of this basic mathematical reality.
Most Americans do not like the idea of paying higher taxes, and they don’t think that low- and middle-income people in particular should pay more taxes. But polling shows that they’re okay with higher-income people paying more. That the Republican bill may do the opposite is going to be a tough sell for many voters, but Republicans hope they can overcome that hurdle by at least fashioning their bill as a big tax cut — to the point that Trump wants to include the word “cut” three times in the bill’s name.
