'No idea what he’s talking about': Trump’s latest tax plans slammed as 'desperate ploys'
With voters heading to the polls in less than 50 days, one columnist is arguing that former President Donald Trump is now resorting to throwing policy ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks.
In his latest op-ed, MSNBC producer Steve Benen wrote that Trump's latest tax policy proposals amount to little more than "desperate grunts" in his effort to halt Vice President Kamala Harris' surging momentum. He compared the ex-president's 2024 policy pitches to his unsuccessful efforts to sway the 2018 midterms in Republicans' favor by making vague promises to cut taxes — which caught GOP lawmakers unaware of any such plans off guard at the time.
"[T]he then-president seemed to be working from the assumption that voters would hear the words 'tax cuts,' swoon reflexively and immediately reward GOP candidates with support," Benen wrote. "If that meant touting a plan that existed only in Trump’s imagination and lying brazenly to the nation, so be it."
READ MORE: Trump's newest policy proposal would be 'huge tax increase' for the middle class: analysis
Since Harris emerged as the Democrats' surprise presidential nominee, Trump has promised to introduce numerous changes to the tax code beneficial for everyday Americans. This includes eliminating taxes on tips, cutting taxes on overtime pay and eliminating the cap on the state and local tax deduction (also known as SALT).
However, the elimination of taxes on tips would almost certainly be offset by higher prices resulting from Trump's proposed new tariffs on imported goods. Meanwhile, Project 2025 would effectively do away with overtime pay by allowing employers to structure hours in a way that deprives people working overtime of overtime pay. And eliminating the SALT cap would undermine his own previous tax cut bill.
The exact specifics of these proposals and their implementation have not yet been made public. And Benen noted that "Trump never elaborates or gets specific about policy details because he has no idea what he’s talking about and has spent his brief electoral career championing post-policy politics."
"How would these policies work? Trump doesn’t know. How much would these tax policies cost? Trump doesn’t know. Who’d benefit from the measures? Trump doesn’t know. Why didn’t he pursue any of this during his four-year term in the White House? Trump doesn’t know," he wrote. "The former president doesn’t have answers to any of these questions because — and this is the important part — they’re not actual tax policies."
READ MORE: '$1800 tax increase': Why Trump's new proposal will hit tipped workers especially hard
"The Republican nominee is just throwing random tax-cut ideas at a wall, hoping they’ll make him more popular," he continued. "What voters are witnessing are the desperate ploys of a candidate who (a) has no strategy to repair his campaign; (b) assumes voters will hear the phrase “tax cut” and respond in some kind of Pavlovian way; and (c) can’t even pretend to know or care about governing."
In addition to the aforementioned proposals, the former president is seeking to extend his 2017 tax cut bill — which primarily benefited the richest Americans — in 2025. The Congressional Budget Office estimated this would cost more than $4 trillion in lost revenue over the course of a decade. His proposals to cut taxes on overtime pay and on Social Security benefits would also hit the U.S. Treasury by hundreds of billions of dollars more.
If all of those policy proposals came to pass, it would result in either catastrophic budget cuts to public services, or to a massive ballooning of the federal deficit. Benen wryly observed: "Trump is simultaneously assuring voters that he’ll be able to shrink the budget deficit because, sure, why not."
Click here to read Benen's column in its entirety.
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