New
No More Gop Tax-hike Talk! Silence Is Golden.
The time is now for a permanent halt to the naggingly recurring and seriously unhealthy chatter about Republicans raising the top tax rate on millionaires.
Like psoriasis, this irritating talk erupts, reassuringly subsides, and then reappears days later, resuming this cycle of needless pain. Over the last few weeks, anonymous White House sources, undisciplined GOP congressmen, and — shockingly — even President Donald J. Trump have flirted with a new, higher tax rate for $1 million-plus tax filers.
Trump wrote on Truth Social that he “would graciously accept” a “‘TINY’ tax increase for the RICH … in order to help the lower and middle income workers.” Trump, who normally is clearer and easier to read than the Hollywood Sign, then transmitted this baffling signal: “Republicans should probably not do it, but I’m OK if they do!!!”
Huh?
Trump’s uncharacteristic ambiguity aside, one wonders: has Bernie Sanders invaded the White House? Has Maxine Waters suddenly become Chief Economic Advisor?
As this Wall Street Journal chart clearly illustrates, “the RICH” already pay more than their fair share of taxes. According to a Tax Foundation analysis of 2022 IRS data, the top 1 percent of tax filers (who made at least $663,164) earned 23 percent of national income and paid 40 percent of all federal income taxes. If that is not enough, what is?
God created Republicans to cut taxes, not raise them — and especially not when the GOP controls the House, the Senate, and the White House. (RELATED: Down With GOP Tax-Hike Talk!)
Imagine if Democrats possessed these three levers of power. Would they even contemplate, for three seconds, ending federal funds for abortion?
OF COURSE NOT!
So, why are Republicans even muttering about something equally alien to the GOP’s very existence?
A Republican tax hike would be entirely unnecessary, ill-conceived, and a bitter betrayal of the party’s base and all the independents and even Democrats who voted Republican last November.
The notion of the GOP drop-kicking its No. 1 signature issue, its Unique Selling Proposition, indeed, its raison d’être into the Potomac — in exchange for NOTHING from Democrats — is so boneheaded that bones recoil in disgust.
“Raising the top tax rate is a Biden–Harris idea,” says John Kartch, communications director for Americans for Tax Reform (ATR). “They lost. No need to adopt their tax hike.”
The record confirms Kartch’s comment: “If we just took the tax rate back to what it was when Bush was president, the top rate paid 39.6 percent of federal taxes,” Joe Biden said. “That would raise $230 billion.”
Trump won overwhelmingly after pledging to make the 2017 Trump/GOP tax cuts permanent. That means leaving those rates where they are, perhaps cutting them, but at the very least not increasing them. Trump was consistent on the campaign trail. (RELATED: Keeping the Tax Cuts and Rebooting the Tax Code)
“Instead of a Biden tax hike, I’ll give you a Trump middle-class, upper-class, lower-class, business-class, big tax cut,” Trump told some 100,000 voters at a New Jersey rally. “You’re gonna have the biggest tax cut.” (RELATED: Tax Hikes and Upset Voters Could Be Clincher for GOP in New Jersey’s Governor Race)
Trump spoke similarly in Portsmouth, New Hampshire: “I will make the Trump tax cuts the largest ever, larger than Reagan’s. I’m going to make them permanent. We have to make them permanent.”
ATR’s video supercut shows Trump promising to make his tax cuts permanent (i.e., not higher) on these and 14 other occasions.
In his Truth Social post, Trump correctly predicted that if Republicans raised taxes, “the Radical Left Democrat Lunatics would go around screaming, ‘Read my lips,’ the fabled Quote by George Bush the Elder that is said to have cost him the Election.” Yes, this is exactly what the Democrats would do. So, why hand them that Louisville Slugger?
Trump then added: “NO, Ross Perot cost him the Election!”
In fact, long before he faced Perot in 1992’s general election, Daddy Bush’s demolition of his “Read my lips” pledge already had enraged Republicans and ignited a full-throated primary challenge from conservative pundit Pat Buchanan. Indeed, Trump himself has said as much:
“The last thing we need is another Bush,” Trump told one interviewer. “I feel strongly about that. I was not happy with the last one, that I can tell you. ‘Read my lips.’ I wasn’t happy with that, either. You know, there was a big problem: ‘Read my lips.’”
Trump said on the hustings: “Remember the ‘Read my lips, no more taxes’? — And I like the father. But do you remember that? ‘Read my lips, no more -’ That was the end of him, when he gave one of the largest tax increases in history.”
Bush’s shattered tax promise did in 1992 exactly what a Trump tax hike would do today: devastate the Republican base, neutralize the GOP’s number-one weapon (tax reduction), and inspire independents and low-propensity voters to stay home, since there would no discernable difference between the parties on this bedrock issue.
Vote Democrat, and they raise taxes. Vote Republican, and they raise taxes, too. So, stop voting.
Not good!
Thankfully, an invisible wall separates this holistically unhelpful GOP tax-hike talk from its implementation: ATR’s anti-tax pledge.
“By signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, candidates and incumbents make a written commitment to oppose any and all tax increases,” ATR’s website explains. “Since the Pledge is a prerequisite for many voters, it is considered binding as long as an individual holds the office for which he or she signed the Pledge.”
According to ATR’s TPP database, 44 sitting U.S. senators signed the TPP, including Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota). Meanwhile, 191 current House members signed, including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana). Each of these 235 incumbent lawmakers vowed, in ink, to “oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses.”
Even IF a tax hike were smart, which it is NOT, it could pass only if 90-plus percent of these Republicans trampled their anti-tax principles and breached this solemn pact in order to perpetrate a tax hike — the worst Republican sin, short of authorizing federal abortion funds.
Since, in their stunning totality, these 235 anti-tax pledges obviate the potential adoption of the Benedict Arnold Act of 2025, no such tax increase could pass.
So, why is any Republican spending any time talking about this? (asked the columnist who wrote a whole op-ed on this matter, but I digress).
Every Republican should stop helping the GOP’s enemies, hurting their friends, and cremating priceless time, energy, and political capital talking about something for which the required votes do not exist.
And, no, a handful of renegade Republicans will not join enough Democrats to pass a bipartisan tax increase. The Big, Beautiful Bill is Trump’s No. 1 legislative priority. So, if RINO moles in Trump’s White House, congressional Republican turncoats, the Lincoln Project, or anyone else thinks that sufficient Democrats would support Trump’s permanent-tax-cut bill, if it boosted the top tax rate, please stop chewing the magic mushrooms and switch to truffles.
Image of GOP press conference, generated by Deroy Murdock using ChatGPT.
The best way to silence this GOP tax-hike gibberish is for all 235 TPP signatories to hold the mother of all press conferences. They should muster beneath a giant banner that reads: “GOP Tax Increase? HELL NO!” A dozen or so should step up to the microphone and say: “Tax rates will rise over our dead bodies!” The media would speed this message worldwide.
This news would make it severely obvious that any GOP tax-increase effort would be futile, a fool’s errand, completely impossible, and otherwise a mind-blowing waste of America’s time and focus. After that, Republicans should burn 100 percent of their calories to cut taxes, which is why their mothers and fathers put them here in the first place.
Errant Republicans should stop trying to stuff a bomb into the Big, Beautiful Bill that will explode and incinerate it on the House and Senate floors. Instead, they should craft a Big, Beautiful Bill that cuts taxes, passes Congress, and then gets signed into law by President Trump.
A unified Republican government is a terrible thing to waste.
READ MORE from Deroy Murdock:
With Diego Garcia Military Base in the Balance, ‘The Chagos Farce’ Is No Laughing Matter
Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.
The post No More GOP Tax-Hike Talk! Silence Is Golden. appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.
