Trump has been considering the idea of raising taxes on the country's financial elite.
Generally speaking, most Republicans are against this, and now this is being compared to President Bush’s “read my lips, no more taxes” moment.
Raising taxes has always been a Democrat “thing,” until it wasn’t, with the most infamous of tax hikes coming during Bush 1.0 after President Bush swore he would not raise taxes.
During Bush’s 1988 campaign, he stated, “Read my lips: no new taxes,” which became the cornerstone of his campaign and helped him beat Michael Dukakis, the Democrat candidate for president that year.
Bush was not even in office for a year before he realized he would have to go back on his promise.
While Bush did not raise income taxes, different levies and fees were raised, which opened the door for Democrat attacks, and one of the reasons Bush was voted out of office after only a single term.
Taxes have always been taboo for Donald Trump, but now it appears as though he is going to take a page out of the Democrat playbook to remove one of the most popular attacks against him… that he only offers tax breaks to the rich to help out himself and rich buddies.
Trump now seems to realize, much like Bush, that budget cuts alone are not going to balance the budget and reduce the country’s debt, so he is looking to raise taxes on people who make more than $2.5 million a year.
Trump actually sounded a bit like Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in justifying the tax hike on the rich, stating, "You know, they'll go around saying, ‘Oh, this is so terrible.’ What you're doing is you're giving up something up top in order to make people in the middle income and the lower income brackets save more. So it's really a redistribution. I would love to be able to give people in a lower bracket a big break by giving up some of what I have.”
Trump has dismissed the comparisons to Bush, saying that raising taxes on the nation’s wealthiest is “good politics.”
Daniel J. Mitchell, a Heritage Distinguished Fellow, is now pleading with Trump not to raise taxes, writing, “The policy most strongly associated with George Bush is best summarized in his now-famous statement, Read my lips: No new taxes.
“Now, not withstanding his 1988 election promise to oppose any tax increase, Bush has announced that he enters budget deficit reduction negotiations with congressional leaders with no preconditions. Administration representatives have made it clear that a tax hike is on the table.”
Speaker Johnson (R-LA), who generally does what Trump wants, has already pushed back against the tax hike, as did Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), who stated, “I don’t want to see taxes go up on anybody. We’re all about lowering taxes, not raising taxes.”
I believe this would put Trump and the GOP in a no-win situation. First, it will be hard for the GOP to even put this legislation on his desk, so that is the first challenge. Second, if the GOP did pass the legislation and Trump signed it, the Democrats, even though Trump would giving them what they have literally been asking for since I can remember, would then attack Trump with the George Bush comparison, as would anti-Trump Republicans.
