Tax nerds in the Beltway went wild this past weekend with President Trump’s announcement of a new middle-class tax cut. First unveiled in a trademark Trump arena speech, and later clarified by the White House, the plan is to pass a 10 percent tax cut for the middle class on top of the large middle-class tax cut contained in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of last December. No one is quite sure of language, timetable, score, how to do this with Congress out campaigning, or virtually any other detail.

The initial bit of context to recall is that the middle class has seen a sharp reduction in their income tax burden thanks to President Trump’s December 2017 tax cut. According to the liberal Tax Policy Center, the middle tier of taxpayers (those with incomes of $49,000 to $86,000) saw an average 2018 tax cut of $930, a 12.4-percent reduction in their total federal tax burden. That amounts to a 1.6 percent increase in after-tax income for this tier.