Trump Breaks Promise to Tax Millionaires in GOP’s ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’
The president’s proposal to raise taxes on the wealthy ruffled feathers among Republicans.
Nathan Howard/Reuters
Congressional Republicans won’t be raising taxes on millionaires, despite President Donald Trump‘s pledge to do so.
The GOP-led House Ways and Means Committee released legislation on Monday for Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful bill.”
Coming in at nearly 400 pages, the document would effectively extend Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act from 2017, which set the tax rate at 37 percent for those making at least $2.5 million annually. Last week, Trump had floated bumping that number up to 39.6 percent to help pay for middle-class and working-class tax cuts and to protect Medicaid, a source close to him told The Hill.
That idea met pushback from Republican-aligned interest groups and lawmakers.
Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, told Trump he strongly opposed it.
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“I gave him my sense of why I thought any discussion of increasing rates was a bad idea: because it would kill jobs, it is damaging to small businesses, nobody in the campaign ever discussed this as an option,” Norquist told NBC News. “The other part is, the entire Republican Party is against it.”
Texas Rep. Chip Roy, though, indicated that he was open to the idea.
“I think it’s wise of him to be putting that on the table,” Roy said. “And I think a lot of people on my side of the aisle reflexively throw up on these kinds of things when we’ve got to put a package together, right? And that means moving some things around.”
Roy reacted to the bill by saying it would need “significant additional changes to garner my support.”
President Donald Trump greets Rep. Chip Roy after his address to Congress in January.
Win McNamee/Reuters
Trump had told reporters last Friday that his proposal is “good politics.”
“I actually think it’s good politics to do it, where richer people give up—and it’s a very small, it’s like a point—but they give it up to benefit people that are lower income,” he said per a White House pool report.
The legislation also raises the debt limit by $4 trillion, which may upset some Republican fiscal hardliners concerned about the deficit.
The bill also ends taxes on tips and overtime wages, Fox News reported.
Additionally, the legislation allows seniors to increase their standard tax deduction.
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