The Tax Policy Center's conclusion is the result of a series of carefully made choices, which cause them to arrive at their selected result. This finding is harming the debate on tax reform.
you can say whatever you want about donald trump not being a conventional republican, not a standard republican or ideological republican, he s still the leader of the republican party and the most unpopular president in the history of the country first term, first year. he is the personification of the party for a lot of people. i want to go back to the question you asked doug which i think and i think it s a moment we must just pause and think about this bill. part of the reason why the bill is not popular and why there s branding is that no one knows what s in it. and one of the things that s happened, when i got to washington, d.c., in 1987, we lived in the rosy glow of the 1986 tax bill which was said to be the model. we d have extensive hearings, public education, everything would be debated. bipartisan coalitions would be built. revenue neutrality would be part of it. we d know exactly what was in this big, sprawling piece of legislation. it would be trade offs would be made
when we met with the president, the idea was that there s to be an adherence to revenue neutrality. now they re borrowing $2.3 trillion to give a tax cut to people at the very top of the spectrum? i think there s little evidence that tax cuts pay for themselves. but they seem to indicate that this is going to enhance expenditure. there s no evidence to support the conclusions that they ve drawn. recall as well that secretary mnuchin, i ve had a cordial relationship with, he said absolutely no tax cut for people at the top. that is certainly not consistent with the legislation that will be released later on today. he also said as did gary cohen, as did the president, carried interest, absolute hook up for hedge fund managers and real estate companies would be out and it s still in. the new york times has an article pointing out there are around 6,000 lobbyists involved in this. is that who s behind it? to your point, steve mnuchin said we re not going to get to
concept of tax reform. we did tax reform very effectively in 1986. there were three principles. the first was revenue neutrality, we weren t going to bloat the budget deficit. the second was preserve distribution. we re not using it as an opportunity to soak the rich. but we re not using it as an opportunity to tilt the playing field toward those who are most fortunate. and the third principle was close shelters, don t open them. this bill raises the deficit. tilts toward the rich, and creates a massive new set of tax shelters with its provisions on so-called pass throughs. professor lawrence summers, thank you very much for joining us tonight. i could listen to you go on and on about this, and i hope we can get you back, thank you very much. thank you. up next, it was a big sweep