Michael R. Strain, Columnist

Republicans, It's Way Past Time for a Real Tax Plan

The way to keep critics from assuming the worst about your intentions is to say exactly what you want to do.

October 10, 2017 at 11:30 AM UTC

Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).”

Sketchy.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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The budget impact of the tax reform framework released last month by Republican congressional leaders and the administration of President Donald Trump has been the subject of intense debate. The Tax Policy Center — an influential organization that models the impact of tax policy — found that the proposed changes to the tax code would add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over the first 10 years, increase taxes for some middle-class households, and bestow the biggest benefits upon the highest-income households.

Senior members of the Trump administration and some congressional Republicans have slammed these conclusions, arguing that the framework intentionally leaves key tax changes unspecified so that Congress can choose the best course as the legislative process unfolds. With so much left to decide, they claim, it is misleading to score the plan without at least offering a range of estimates reflecting different assumptions.