'Identity crisis': Analysis exposes GOP’s 'working class' rebrand as a total sham

New Republic columnist Greg Sargent noticed the GOP’s purported effort to “evolve into a ‘working-class party,’” but isn’t buying it.

President Donald Trump’s recent talk about “raising taxes on the rich” runs counter to his party’s “new and expanded giveaway largely benefiting wealthy investors” buried in the House GOP reconciliation bill, according to tax experts. The president accrued media attention for supposedly wanting House Speaker Mike Johnson to use the current budget bill to close the “carried interest loophole,” letting investment fund managers pay lower tax rates on profits.

But Trump Republicans and private equity lobbyists “got to work” and made Trump back off that one, giving hedge fund managers, private equity executives, and their lobbyists a big victory according to Punchbowl News.

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However Johnson’s budget bill also creates a whole new tax benefit “for precisely these types of wealthy investors,” Sargent reports.

A provision of Trump’s 2017 tax law, which overwhelmingly benefited the rich and corporations involves a deduction for “pass-through” entities, which pass income through businesses to owners, who then pay the taxes on it. The new Trump 2017 tax cuts under consideration in the House expands that provision, raising the amount these businesses can deduct even higher.

The “Business Development Companies” (BDC) deduction primarily benefits the wealthy because “wealthy people invest in BDCs,” says Michael Kaercher, the Tax Law Center’s deputy director.

Brendan Duke, senior director at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the “GOP bill actually creates a new tax break for the same private equity industry” that Sargent reports will give away an estimated $10 billion in revenues in the form of a sizable tax break for the wealthy.

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There’s also the matter of the various Medicaid cuts the GOP is attempting to sneak into the budget through work and eligibility requirements, said Sargent, who predicts the allegedly Medicaid-cut averse Trump will “be fine with cutting ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’” that just happens to lower Medicaid enrollment without technically “cutting” the program.

“Somehow the ‘C-suite’ side in the GOP identity crisis keeps winning out.” Sargent said.

Read the full The New Republic Report here.