President Trump announced on Wednesday the broad outlines of a sweeping tax reform package that would simplify and cut taxes. He praised the framework as “a middle-class miracle” and “a tax code to put American jobs first.”
“I’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” Trump said in an address in Indianapolis. “We’re going to cut taxes for the middle class, make the tax code simpler and more fair for everyday Americans. And we are going to bring back the jobs and wealth that have left our country and—most people thought—left our country for good.”
In a relatively disciplined speech, Trump steered clear of the details but promised big reforms to stimulate the economy and allow lower-income Americans to keep more of their money. (Read about some of the specifics, which my colleague Tony Mecia got Wednesday morning, here.)
“It’s not good for me, believe me,” Trump said, referring to Democratic criticism that the cuts will mostly help the rich. “But what is good for me, not only as president, and legacy, is if everything shoots off like a rocket ship, like it should have for 20 years. That’s good for me. That’s good for everyone. And a lot of very wealthy people feel the same way.”
Trump also pledged to eliminate a number of extraneous taxes, including the alternative minimum tax and the “crushing, horrible, unfair estate tax.”
“If you don’t like your family, it won’t matter,” Trump said of the latter, “but for those of you who do love your families, it matters a lot.”
Throughout the speech, Trump emphasized his desire that tax reform be bipartisan, quoting John F. Kennedy to say that tax reform would be the “most effective measure” by which the country could “spur our economy forward”—and warning dire retribution against Democrats who might drag their feet. At one point, Trump pointed to Indiana senator Joe Donnelly, a Democrat who traveled with him aboard Air Force One for the announcement. Indiana’s Republican senator, Todd Young, was also present.
“If Senator Donnelly doesn’t approve it,” Trump said with a grin, “because, you know, he’s on the other side—we will come here and we will campaign against him like you wouldn’t believe.”
Mark It Down—“I’m looking at that very closely. I am not happy with it. I will tell you, I am not happy with it.” —President Donald Trump, on the revelations that HHS Secretary Tom Price has spent thousands of taxpayer dollars on chartered flights, September 27, 2017.
2020 Watch—The Los Angeles Times reports California governor Jerry Brown has signed a bill moving that state’s presidential primary to early March. That means a lot more delegates up for grabs pretty early in the presidential primary season.
With the island of Puerto Rico suffering in the wake of Hurricane Maria, President Trump is being pressured to suspend a maritime law that some say has slowed aid reaching the island.
The Jones Act is a World War I-era shipping law stipulating that all ships traveling from American coast to American coast must be American-owned and American-crewed. The Department of Homeland Security waived the law in the interest of speedy recovery after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma hit the U.S. mainland, but say a waiver is unnecessary for Puerto Rico.
Trump told reporters Thursday that “we have a lot of shippers and a lot of people . . . who work in the shipping industry that don’t want the Jones Act lifted.”
Arizona senator John McCain, who has called for repealing the law in the past, renewed his efforts this week with a Tuesday letter.
“It is unacceptable to force the people of Puerto Rico to pay at least twice as much for food, clean drinking water, supplies and infrastructure due to Jones Act requirements as they work to recover from this disaster,” McCain wrote. “Every day that business owners are unable to recover their assets and account for lost business, the economy will retreat even further into devastation.”
For his part, Trump has downplayed concerns of a slow federal response in Puerto Rico.
“Massive amounts of water, food, and supplies, by the way, are being delivered on an hourly basis,” he said Wednesday in Indiana. “It’s something that nobody has ever seen before from this country, I can tell you that.”
According to Puerto Rico governor Ricardo Rossello, the problem is one of distribution. “We need bus drivers, we need gas station operators and some of them have devastation and are still locked down, as well,” Rossello told NPR on Tuesday. “So our focus has been to identify these bus drivers, to identify the gas station operators, to get them open and to start the transmission of all of this fuel.”
NFL Watch—Peter King of Sports Illustrated has compiled several letters he’s received from former fans of the National Football League who say the mixing of football and politics has them tuning out. Worth a read.
Column of the Day—“Trump’s Empty Culture Wars” by Ross Douthat.
China’s highest-ranking female politician, Liu Yandong, will visit the White House Thursday. The vice premier of China will meet with President Trump in the afternoon.
This is weird. Amazon, the online retailer that upended the industry by first destroying the brick-and-mortar bookstore industry, is . . . opening up its own brick-and-mortar stores. The first two, apparently, in Washington and Austin.
Song of the Day—“California” by Phantom Planet.
