The GOP chairmen of the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Finance Committee contradicted Wednesday the comments President Donald Trump had previously made about middle-class tax cuts he announced prior to the midterm elections.
Only a day earlier, Trump said middle-class Americans would receive an additional 10 percent tax reduction separate from that in the package signed into law last year.
“It’s going to be a tax reduction of 10 percent for the middle class,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Tuesday. “And this will be on top of the tax reduction that the middle class has already gotten.”
However, the two chairmen, Senators Mike Crapo and Orrin Hatch said what the President was referring to was making permanent existing lower rates, which for procedural reasons can be maintained for only 10 years.
Trump didn’t say whether existing tax cuts would be made permanent, but Crapo pointed to how tax cuts temporarily put in place during the George W. Bush administration were made permanent before they expired, saying “it’s the same kind of dynamic now,” and adding that they would “hopefully deal with that issue now rather than waiting ten years to do it.”
Hatch, on his part, refused to say how much he knew about what Trump announced Tuesday. “We’re going to have to get into more details before I comment about it. But it’ll come right to me so I’ll be doing my best not to mess it up,” he told reporters.
When asked to at least say whether there was an actual tax cut proposal, Hatch responded, “Well, I have a general knowledge but I don’t feel like I should comment about it.”
He further said he had not seen the so-called “resolution” that Trump talked about. “I don’t have it yet, so I’ll wait and see what he does. I’ll be happy to listen to him in every way,” the senator said.
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