House

Key GOP chairman endorses Trump’s new tax-cut promise

by Niv Elis - 10/23/18 4:13 PM ET

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) said Tuesday that the House would work with President Trump on a new round of tax cuts if Republicans keep control of both chambers in the midterm elections next month.

“We will continue to work with the White House and Treasury over the coming weeks to develop an additional 10 percent tax cut focused specifically on middle-class families and workers, to be advanced as Republicans retain the House and Senate,” Brady said in a statement.

Brady’s comments came days after the president caught Congress and his staff off guard by promising a new round of tax cuts before the November midterm elections.

Congress is in recess until after the Nov. 6 election. Trump later said the legislation would be introduced after polls close next month.

{mosads}Speaking in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said Brady had been working on a new bill “for a while” and that details would be forthcoming quickly.

“We’ll be putting that in this week,” he told reporters.

The president denied that announcing a new tax cut just two weeks ahead of the election was any indication of problems with the 2017 law.

Earlier in the day, Trump’s top economic advisor Larry Kudlow said that any tax bill could take significant time to get into law.

“It may not surface for a while. But that’s his goal,” Kudlow told reporters at the White House.

The GOP tax law, signed in late 2017, lowered corporate tax rates permanently, but only included a temporary cut for individuals in order to comply with budgetary rules.

Democrats have hammered Trump and Republicans for the law, saying it ran up deficits to provide vast gains to corporations and the wealthy while leaving the middle class behind.

Trump seemed to address that criticism on Monday.

“We’re doing it now for middle-income people. This is not for business, this is for middle,” Trump told reporters at the White House.

Neither Brady nor Trump discussed how to finance the tax cuts. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected that the 2017 law would add $1.9 trillion to the deficit over a decade.

–Updated at 5:50 p.m.

Tags Donald Trump Economic policy of Donald Trump gop tax cuts Kevin Brady Tax cut