Mulvaney: Trump ‘Is Not Going To Sign a Bill that Raises Taxes for the Middle Class’
RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
TAPPER: "The nonpartisan joint committee on taxation analyzed the tax bill and found that they think it would effectively raise taxes. Let me read you part of the findings. If it becomes law Americans earning $30,000 a year or below would pay higher taxes in 200021. Now, I understand that some people might argue that eliminating ObamaCare subsidies is not the same thing as increasing taxes. But whatever you want to call it, lower income people will have less money so I guess the big question is how can Republicans and the White House propose a bill that would simultaneously cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans while effectively creating more of a burden for those earning less than $30,000 a year?"
MULVANEY: "The White House is not going to sign a bill that raises taxes for the middle class, but what you just read gets deep in the weeds of scoring those particular tax bills and one of the fundamental assumptions is getting rid of a mandate means folks are going to start to give stuff up. If they don’t want it they don’t have to have it but changing the mandate doesn’t kick people off of policies. Most of the folks covered by ObamaCare are covered by the Medicaid expansion and the individual mandate would have no impact on that. So you’ve moved down into the details of scoring. It’s difficult to get at what is going to happen in this complex economy of ours but the bottom shrine is if we really believe that whatever comes out of the house and Senate conference committee raises the taxes for the middle class the president is not going to sign it."
TAPPER: "I understand that whether or not a subsidy, taking away a subsidy is the same thing as raising taxes but the bottom line is we’re talking about thousands of dollars for individual families that cant afford it while we’re talking about people in the higher income levels are going to get millions of dollars of tax relief. You heard Susan Collins say she would like to skew more relief to lower and middle income families. Isn’t there an obvious path to have more of this relief go to poem who make less than $100,000 a year and less of it go to the people who honestly aren’t wanting in the sense of whether it’s a thousand dollars subsidy it doesn’t affect their lives?"
MULVANEY: "I have to smile because every time I come on your network we have a discussion about how the proposed tax bill that will go to lower the rich. The bottom line is this. The president has been trying to get from the very beginning is focused on two things. How can ordinary Americans, hardworking taxpayers pay less and pay whatever they pay simpler. That’s principle number one and how do we get that corporate tax rate down as low as we can. That’s what continues to drive our interest in this bill. The house bill that passed last week preserves that. Everything we’ve seen so far about the Senate bill is taking shape this week and that’s what’s driving the interest in this. As long as the house and the Senate stay within the guardrails we’ll be okay."
