Trump Scraps “Phenomenal” Tax Plan, Goes Back To Drawing Board

Remember when Trump promised in early February that he would unveil a “phenomenal” tax plan within two to three weeks? Well, it was just scrapped, because as AP reports, Trump has scrapped the tax plan he campaigned on and is going back to the drawing board, hoping to find a plan that will have Republican consensus, something his current proposal has failed to achieve. In doing so, the president threatens the timetable of what many had seen as the primary driver behind his entire first year agenda, which is not in peril, and may not come until early 2018 if not later.
According to the AP, while Trump’s first attempt to write legislation is in its early stages and the White House has kept much of it under wraps, it has already sprouted the consideration of a series of unorthodox proposals including a drastic cut to the payroll tax, aimed at appealing to Democrats. Some view the search for new options as a result of Trump’s refusal “to set clear parameters for his plan and his exceedingly challenging endgame: reducing tax rates enough to spur faster growth without blowing up the budget deficit.”
The good news: the ambitious pace to figure out a plan reflects Trump’s haste to move quickly past a bruising failure to broker a compromise within his own party on how to replace the health insurance law enacted under President Barack Obama.
The bad news: administration officials cited by AP say it’s now unlikely that a tax overhaul will meet the August deadline set by Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.
Why is the White House, by which we mean Gary Cohn and Goldman Sachs, bypassing Congress and coming up with its own tax plan? One reason proposed is that it is trying to learn the lessons from health care: rather than accepting a bill written by the lawmakers, White House officials are taking a more active role (again: see Gary Cohn).

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Apr 10, 2017.