Quote of the Day: Taxes Are Going Way, Way Down!

Yin Bogu/Xinhua via ZUMA

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From President Trump, explaining his goal for tax reform:

We’re going to bring the individual rate to 10 percent or 12 percent, much lower than it is right now.

Boo yah! This would be quite a cut from the current top rate of 39.6 percent. Even Grover Norquist doesn’t dream of tax rates like this. That means it’s time for another round of “WTF was he talking about?” Let’s review our options:

  1. It was just a slip of the tongue. But this is unlikely since Trump specifically said “10 or 12.” He really meant it.
  2. He’s talking about personal income tax as a percentage of GDP, and he wants to increase it to 10 or 12 percent. But no: he said it would be “much lower” than it is right now.
  3. He was talking about the log of the root mean square of the average tax paid by people in the top bracket.
  4. He has no clue what he’s talking about.

Hmmm. I think I’m going with Option 4. The Post phrased this diplomatically: “It wasn’t clear exactly what he was referring to and the White House didn’t immediately clarify his intention.”

No worries, though, I’m sure the White House will explain things soon. There’s probably already some poor schmoe staying up all night looking for something—anything—that the Republican plan will plausibly reduce to 10 or 12 percent.

Here’s a hint: adjusted gross income. Currently, individual income taxes are about 14 percent of reported AGI. A tax plan that reduced this rate to “10 or 12” percent would represent a tax cut of 15-30 percent. That’s the ticket, I think.

Alternatively, the White House could just invent some new numbers of their own. Or declare that the press is playing “gotcha games.” Or insist that the president can say whatever he wants, and Beltway elites will never stop him from talking directly to the common man. Or claim ignorance until reporters get tired of asking. All of these have worked well for them in the past.

POSTSCRIPT: The Post also reports that Republicans are “looking for a way to keep their plan from being a massive windfall for the wealthiest Americans.” Hahahaha. Sure they are. DC journalists crack me up sometimes.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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