The Long-Term Price of Today’s Tax Cuts

The Trump tax plan would deliver average tax cuts of $700,000 to the 175,000 richest families in the U.S., enough money for each to buy a new 50-foot yacht every year, columnist David Leonhardt writes in the New York Times. But it would actually raise taxes on a sizable portion of the middle class, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center. And by increasing deficits, it sets the stage for damaging cuts later on. “At some point, the government will need to pay its bills, through a combination of tax increases and spending cuts,” Leonhardt says. “Virtually any future deficit-reduction plan — except for a repeal of the Trump tax plan — would hurt most families more than his plan helps them. This chain of events has happened before. The Reagan and George W. Bush tax cuts may have at first seemed to help the middle class and poor. But the deficits led to later cuts in education, medical research, transportation and anti-poverty programs that almost surely erased the benefits of a modest tax cut. Already, today’s congressional leaders are talking about sizable cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.”