'Political swamp is open for business': WSJ's conservative editors hammer GOP's tax plan

The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board is thoroughly unimpressed with the latest draft of House Republicans' budget reconciliation bill on tax cuts, energy deregulation, and border security — a project President Donald Trump has referred to as his "big, beautiful bill."

The bill accomplishes a number of GOP objectives at least in part, including over $600 billion in cuts to Medicaid and permanently enshrining Trump's tax cuts from 2017 at a massive deficit spending cost.

But it's missing a great deal of policies that the GOP championed for decades, the board wrote.

In particular, the board was disgruntled by the lack of major new tax breaks for the wealthy. Trump flirted with the idea of raising marginal taxes on the rich and backed off it, but, the board noted, the bill effectively "raise[s] the top marginal rate by stealth by limiting itemized deductions for the 37% top bracket, which kicks in at $626,350 for singles and $751,600 for couples. This echoes the Pease limitation on itemized deductions, which the 2017 tax reform wisely axed. Tax reform has typically meant trading fewer deductions for lower rates, but not with this crowd of Republicans."

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At the end of the day, the board wrote, the bill "is a hodgepodge of tax cuts for some groups, and tax increases for others. In that respect it’s less a tax reform that simplifies the code than a tax version of a spending bill that redistributes income through the tax code. As with tariffs, the political swamp is open for business in a big way."

Already, the bill's particulars are threatening to fracture the Republican caucus, with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) decrying the Medicaid cuts and a number of Northeast, blue state Republicans balking at the insufficient increase for the state and local tax deduction (SALT) — when, the board noted, already the increase in the bill "begins to unravel one of the GOP’s biggest achievements from 2017" in reining in a complicated tax giveaway that mostly went to wealthy people in Democratic states.

"Congress must pass a tax bill this year to avoid a $4.5 trillion tax increase, but the House price is a partial reversal of tax reform and a far more complicated code," the board concluded. "Give it a single cheer."