Wall Street Journal slams GOP tax plan’s ‘stealth’ rate

The Wall Street Journal editorial board is slamming the House GOP’s tax legislation, calling on the House Ways and Means Committee to fix the income-tax rate in this week’s markup.

“In other words, Republicans are embracing higher tax rates a la Democrats to redistribute the money to non-taxpayers a la Democrats,” the board wrote in an op-ed published Sunday. “Remind us again why college-educated suburbanites who are successful in business or the professions and are unenthralled with Donald Trump should vote Republican?”

The newspaper also called on the Senate Finance Committee to clean up the legislation should the House fail to do so.

“It’s no surprise, then, that Republicans are resorting to Democratic arguments that this is no big deal because these taxpayers can afford it,” the editorial board said. “They’re also claiming this is kosher because the 1986 Reagan reform also had a bubble rate of 33% in addition to a top rate of 28%.”

The editorial comes after the newspaper in a Friday op-ed criticized the individual tax rates as “stealthy.”

House Republicans last week unveiled their legislation, which cuts the number of individual tax brackets from seven to four.

The Wall Street Journal on Sunday went so far as to suggest that should the House pass the tax reform legislation, Democrats will win the majority in the 2018 midterms.

“If the Kevin Brady-Paul Ryan 45.6% bubble bracket becomes law, this will soon become the new top rate for everybody—perhaps when Nancy Pelosi is Speaker after 2018,” the paper’s editorial board wrote.