Politics Above the Middle Class: The Democratic Way

Typical.

As Americans across the country feel tax reform’s benefits and the law becomes more popular each day, bitter Democrats—looking for a win at any cost—have developed a plan to reverse these tax breaks.

The analysis is in, and Democrats’ counter-tax plan devastates the people whose support their party desperately needs.

What’s most striking about the plan, besides the specificity not usually seen in such agendas, is that if the plan became law it would hit blue states and cities much harder than red/Trump states and areas. This is true for several reasons:

The Democrat tax hike plan restores the AMT yet leaves the SALT cap in place. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act law all but eliminated the alternative minimum tax (AMT) for 4.4 million families. These tax households–mostly six figure mass affluent types living in expensive blue cities and suburbs–used to have to calculate their taxes two ways, and pay the higher (that is, AMT) figure. One of the things they had to do in that calculation was disallow their state and local tax (SALT) deduction. So by being in the AMT, they got no SALT deduction at all.

Democrats are attempting to put political games ahead of Americans’ best interests, by ripping away the tax breaks they deserve. To make things worse, they also want to hike up taxes for businesses, despite the economic boost their success has given the country.

The plan raises the corporate tax rate to 25 percent, which Republicans cut from 35 percent to 21 percent. The Republicans exempted many upper-middle-class families from the alternative minimum tax and raised the threshold for the estate tax; the Democrats would undo both cuts. The Republicans cut the top statutory tax rate on income from 39.6 percent to 37 percent. Democrats want to go back to 39.6.

Here’s some pro bono advice for the Democratic Party: don’t introduce plans that hurt the people whose votes you need. Just because Republicans delivered the increasingly popular tax reform package, which launched The Great American Comeback, doesn’t mean your party should play politics with it.

It’s time to get on board.