OPINION:
President Trump and Republican leaders are pulling out all the stops in a last ditch effort to keep control of Congress in next month’s midterm elections.
For days Mr. Trump’s been railing against a fast-growing caravan of more than 5,000 migrants from across Central America, heading toward the U.S. border, characterizing them as filled with violent criminals, gang members and “unknown Middle Easterners” — though he provides no evidence to back up that claim.
“You’re going to find MS-13, you’re going to find Middle Eastern, you’re going to find everything. And guess what? We’re not allowing them in our country,” Mr. Trump said.
Yet when asked by reporters if he has any proof of violent Middle Eastern participation in the flow of Hispanic refugees nearing our border, he says, “We want safety.”
And the people most responsible for this growing hoard of humanity, he said, were the Democrats and their pro-immigrant policies — claiming that the flow of migrants will only worsen if Democrats are put in control of Congress.
Then, Mr. Trump opened up a new campaign strategy over the weekend, telling reporters he was going to give middle-income taxpayers a new 10 percent tax cut before the Nov. 6 elections, in addition to the sweeping tax rate reductions Congress has already enacted and is now the law of the land.
His remarks sounded as if he alone was going to give taxpayers the additional tax cut before the November 6 midterm elections, which is impossible because Congress has adjourned for the elections, and only Congress can levy taxes.
Reporters frantically sought further official verification in all the usual places, but the White House offered “no substantive information,” The Washington Post reported, and members of Congress were home campaigning.
“Yet Washington’s bureaucratic machinery whirred into action nonetheless — working to produce a policy that could be seen as supporting Trump’s whim,” The Post said Wednesday in a front page story beneath a headline that said, “Officials rush to make Trump’s whims reality.”
“One such option now under discussion” in the White House “is a symbolic nonbinding ’resolution’ designed to signal to voters ahead of the elections that if Republicans hold their congressional majorities they might pass a future 10 percent tax cut for the middle class,” the newspaper said.
Republican Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, the chairman of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said Tuesday that he would get together with the White House and the Treasury Department to come up with a plan “over the coming weeks.”
And that, dear readers, is how official policy is made — or hopes to be made — by the administration to influence the outcome of a very close election in less than a dozen days. So, don’t hold your breath.
Earlier this week, additional details about Mr. Trump’s 10 percent tax cut revealed that Republicans planned to vote on a resolution sometime after the midterm elections.
It would be a nonbinding measure that in no way would guarantee a tax cut, The Post reported, and “details of the proposal remained vague.”
Mr. Trump’s tax cut reforms, which went into effect at the beginning of this year, have had an undeniably pro-growth impact on the economy. But it was weighted much more on the corporate side of the tax ledger than on personal income taxes for middle-income Americans.
“I didn’t think we could get any more than we got. We got the max,” Mr. Trump said Tuesday. “And now because of the fact that the economy is doing so well, we feel that we can give up some more. I couldn’t have gotten that extra 10 percent when we originally passed that plan.”
Last year’s tax cut plan was estimated to add $1 trillion or more to the budget deficit, but the added middle class 10 percent tax cut, if it is ever approved by Congress, was expected to be revenue neutral because of offsetting spending cuts or reduced tax breaks elsewhere in the tax code.
“This is for middle-income people, all middle-income people, a big tax, 10 percent. We’ll be putting it in next week,” Mr. Trump said.
But Congress won’t be in session next week. It will be back home in what voting analysts say may be one of the closest congressional and Senate elections in decades.
• Donald Lambro is a syndicated columnist and contributor to The Washington Times.
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