House Republicans likely dodged a political bullet when they opted against including tax hikes on the wealthy in this year’s reconciliation bill.
Trump promised his voters across-the-board tax cuts while campaigning, but once confronted with the difficult math of paying for his expensive agenda, the president — and some members of the GOP caucus — began to wobble.
So long as Senate Republicans stick with their colleagues in the lower chamber and avoid adding tax hikes to the “big, beautiful” bill, they’ll avoid paying a steep political price at the ballot box.
As new polling obtained by National Review shows — and as President George H. W. Bush found out the hard way — voters tend to take it personally when politicians break their promises on tax policy.
Working on behalf of Americans for Tax Reform, Trump pollster John McLaughlin asked 1,000 likely general election voters to rank how the following hypothetical scenario would influence their voting preferences: “If a candidate signed a pledge promising to never vote for a tax increase, and then voted for a tax increase anyway, how important would that be in your next decision to vote for that candidate?”
Eighty-three percent of the total survey respondents said that the issue was either “very” or “somewhat” important to their vote. That finding was bipartisan: According to the poll, 89 percent of Republicans, 79 percent of Democrats, and 81 percent of independents surveyed fell into either the “very” or “somewhat important” response category.
The poll, conducted from May 21 to May 26, serves as a not-so-subtle reminder to congressional Republicans and the administration that voters are paying close attention to the tax provisions in this year’s House-passed reconciliation bill, which aims to extend and amend certain expiring provisions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that President Donald Trump signed into law his first term. The tax rate on highest earners is set to increase from 37 percent to 39.6 percent in December if those tax cuts are not extended. Middle income Americans will also see their taxes increased if those TCJA tax rates are not preserved.
On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump talked constantly about a suite of tax-related pledges he’d enact if reelected, including exempting tips, overtime pay, and Social Security from taxes. But as ATR constantly points out, he also pledged across-the-board tax cuts for all Americans regardless of income bracket.
“Instead of a Biden tax hike, I’ll give you a Trump middle-class, upper-class, lower-class, business-class — big tax cut,” Trump said on the trail. Trump also echoed this sentiment during his joint address before Congress earlier this year: “The next phase of our plan to deliver the greatest economy in history is for this Congress to pass tax cuts for everybody. . . . We’re seeking permanent income tax cuts all across the board.”
The survey’s release comes as Senate Republicans are preparing to make their own tweaks to the House-passed reconciliation bill. Democrats, meanwhile, are accusing Republicans of cutting Medicaid to fund massive tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy.
While the current draft legislation does not raise taxes on high earners, it’s possible some Senate Republicans could pressure congressional GOP tax-writers to include an increase in the millionaire tax rate to offset other expensive provisions in the bill, including legislative language beefing up military and border-security funding, increasing the state and local tax deduction, creating $1,000 per baby child-savings accounts, temporarily raising the standard deduction for seniors, and temporarily exempting tips and overtime pay from taxes.
A few weeks before the House bill cleared the lower chamber, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Mike Crapo (R., Idaho) told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he’s “not excited” about raising taxes on the highest earners, while acknowledging that “there are a number of people in both the House and Senate who are.”
“If the president weighs in in favor of it, that’s going to be a big factor that we have to take into consideration as well,” he said.
Trump, for his part, spent the better part of late spring floating some kind of tax hike on the rich in private conversations with congressional Republicans in the House and the Senate, according to multiple news outlets. But the idea didn’t make it into the final House-passed legislation.
Republicans who oppose tax hikes on the highest earners have warned that reversing course on this pledge would rope the GOP into a repeat of Bush 41’s bait-and-switch on taxes that came back to haunt Republicans electorally.
“My opponent won’t rule out raising taxes, but I will. And the Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I’ll say no. And they’ll push and I’ll say no. And they’ll push again, and I’ll say to them: ‘Read my lips: no new taxes,’” candidate and then–Vice President Bush pledged at the 1988 Republican convention, two years before he signed a reconciliation bill that raised taxes.
Trump acknowledged the political perils of raising taxes on the wealthy in a cryptic social media post a couple weeks before the House bill cleared the lower chamber, while agreeing to sign legislation that does so if congressional Republicans go that route.
“The problem with even a ‘TINY’ tax increase for the RICH, which I and all others would graciously accept in order to help the lower and middle income workers, is that the Radical Left Democrat Lunatics would go around screaming, ‘Read my lips,’ the fabled Quote by George Bush the Elder that is said to have cost him the Election. NO, Ross Perot cost him the Election!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “In any event, Republicans should probably not do it, but I’m OK if they do!!!”