Photo: Shepard Sherbell/Corbis/Getty Images
As much as he likes to think of himself as a courageous leader who keeps all his promises, Donald Trump has a habit of flip-flopping on some pretty important issues. Abortion comes to mind right away; he’s danced around various positions on this issue for decades, although there’s no question his presidencies have been deadly for reproductive rights. A more contemporary example is tariffs, which he has been imposing, pausing, negotiating, re-imposing, and flat-out lying about on nearly a daily basis since reentering the White House. But now, as congressional Republicans struggle to put together a budget reconciliation bill to implement his legislative agenda, the 47th president is driving them crazy by flip-flopping on an idea none of them were prepared for: a higher top tax rate for the wealthiest Americans.
By way of background: Trump’s 2017 tax bill lowered the top marginal rate for individuals from 39.6 percent to 37 percent. Adjusted for inflation, that top rate now applies to individual income above $626,350 ($751,600 for couples filing jointly). For 2025, the president’s top priority is extending those tax cuts (and adding on some new ones he proposed on the 2024 campaign trail), so Republicans figured the reduced top tax rate would be extended too, in keeping with the GOP’s ancient solicitude for the “job creators” at the top of the wealth pyramid.
But the White House threw Republicans for a loop last month when they began whispering about how mind-blowing it might be if in addition to the big corporate tax giveaways in the works, Congress actually reimposed a higher top individual tax rate on the very wealthiest Americans (say, those earning a million bucks, to pick a nice round number). Horrified old-school conservatives and congressional GOP leaders alike really hated the idea, and within a couple of weeks, it seemed to die, as Politico reported at the time:
President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday [April 23] came out against a tax hike on the wealthiest Americans — likely putting the nail in the coffin of the idea.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he thought the idea would be “very disruptive” because it would prompt wealthy people to leave the country.
“You know, the old days, they left states. They go from one state to the other. Now with transportation so quick and so easy, they leave countries. You lose a lot of money if you do that,” Trump said.
But then, as the New York Times reported on May 8, the new top-rate idea (albeit for a slightly smaller cohort of the wealthy) rose from the dead, precisely as Trump’s vassals in Congress were struggling to finalize the numbers in the tax portion of the reconciliation bill:
President Trump has asked House Speaker Mike Johnson to include a tax hike on rich Americans in the sprawling fiscal package lawmakers are putting together, according to two people familiar with the request, reviving an idea that many Republicans have opposed.
Mr. Trump wants to create a new top income bracket for people making more than $2.5 million per year, the people said, and to tax income above that level at a rate of 39.6 percent. The president brought up the idea to Mr. Johnson in a call on Wednesday, one of the people said. …
Mr. Trump has been flirting with some kind of tax hike on the rich for weeks, alarming Republicans who as a general matter like to cut taxes. Conservatives have aggressively lobbied against the idea, and last month, Mr. Trump proclaimed that a so-called millionaires tax would be “very disruptive.”
Just as Mike Johnson probably asked aides to find him a wooden stake, Trump appeared to undermine his own idea in one of those classic Truth Social posts that Republicans try to parse like they are divine oracles:
The problem with even a “TINY” tax increase for the RICH, which I and all others would graciously accept in order to help the lower and middle income workers, is that the Radical Left Democrat Lunatics would go around screaming,“Read my lips,” the fabled Quote by George Bush the Elder that is said to have cost him the Election. NO, Ross Perot cost him the Election! In any event, Republicans should probably not do it, but I’m OK if they do!!!
So Trump is advising his troops that the very tax increase (or more accurately, the failure to extend a particular tax cut) he was just advocating would be a bad idea politically, on the very bogus grounds that Democrats would immediately cite a political episode from 35 years ago (George H.W. Bush agreeing to a deficit-reduction package with new revenues, thus violating his imprudent “no new taxes” pledge) to blow it out of the water. Trump, in his inimitable manner, confused things by arguing with himself mid-post as to whether the tax heresy or Ross Perot actually cost Bush reelection, before concluding that the GOP is asking for trouble if it does the very thing he asked Congress to do.
Where to begin in untangling this mess? Those who have never heard of or have fully forgotten the Bush tax-heresy saga should understand that his violation of the “no new taxes” pledge hurt him with conservatives and helped make swearing off any tax increase ever perhaps the most fundamental dogma of his party. It was not a major talking point for Democrats in 1992 (as I can assure you as head of the Democratic National Convention speechwriting team that year); the poor performance of the economy, among other things, did in Bush. And actually, not that it matters, Trump’s wrong about Perot’s independent bid as well; the best evidence we have strongly suggests Clinton would have won anyway.
In any event, it’s likely Johnson and other Republicans will seize on Trump’s political warning as an excuse to avoid the conservative freak-out that would erupt if they actually did bump up taxes on multimillionaires (who would mostly come out ahead, more than likely, thanks to other tax cuts the GOP plans to offer). But by bringing it up repeatedly, Trump also gives some love to the “populists” in his camp, who quite accurately think a “tax hike on the rich” would throw some sand into the gears of a Democratic message machine now focused on the argument that Team Trump is “cutting Medicaid to give tax cuts to billionaires like Elon Musk.”
Any final conclusion about this sage, however, is subject to revision based on what the 47th president says later today, or tomorrow, or the day after that, ad infinitum.
