President Trump made sure to let his Mar-a-Lago friends know what he’d given them for Christmas as he arrived at his Florida resort for the holidays.
“You all just got a lot richer,” he told a group of high-roller buddies at Mar-a-Lago on Friday, CSB News reported.
Trump reportedly made the remark during dinner at the exclusive Florida resort — where membership fees start at $200,000.
The comment was overheard by two people at a nearby table, according to CBS News — and was a definite departure from Trump’s prior insistence that his sweeping overhaul would mostly benefit the middle class.
The tax plan signed by Trump on Friday slashes rates for top earners and corporations.
While Trump has said he won’t benefit from it, tax experts calculate the President will save roughly $11 million under the new plan.
The Trump administration and congressional Republicans have argued the cuts will allow U.S. companies with business overseas to return stateside.
With more revenue from lower tax rates, they argue, companies can invest and pay their workers higher salaries.
But Democrats — with an eye on the 2018 midterm elections — note that the small savings touted for working and middle-class families will disappear in 2025.
But the corporate tax rate — dropping from 35 to 21% with generous deductions for certain types of businesses added in — are forever.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center calculated that every income bracket will see gains in after-tax income, at least until some of the provisions expire after 2025. But the bottom 20% of wage earners will only see a gain of about 0.5%, while the earner in the top 20% will get gains of about 2%, the Tax Policy Center said.
Some fiscal think tanks have warned the cuts could add close to $1.5 trillion to the national debt without a new source of revenue.
“This legislation makes a bad situation worse, and it drives up the deficit,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (photo left), an independent from Vermont, a staunch critic of the cuts, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “Many large corporations are going to use their tax breaks to make their CEOs wealthier and do little for their workers.”
Economist Larry Kudlow, an informal Trump adviser, dismissed suggestions the cuts will balloon the national debt.
“This thing is going to pay for itself,” Kudlow said on billionaire John Catsimatidis’ “The Cats Roundtable” radio show on AM 970.
He said the economy could now grow at a rate of 3% to 4%, which could prompt ripple expansions in Japan and Europe.
“Trump has ended the war on business. He’s ended the regulatory war,” Kudlow said. “This (tax reform) now ends the punishment of investment. . . . I think this thing is going to pan out better than almost anybody thinks.”
With News Wire Services
