George Stephanopoulos forces White House to admit Trump is lying about middle-class tax cuts

Continuing the Trump administration’s health care tradition of routinely lying about public policy, White House economic adviser Gary Cohn Thursday morning insisted the very wealthy would not get a tax cut under the pending Republican proposal. Even though the very wealthy quite clearly would benefit from huge tax cuts under the pending Republican proposal.

The issue isn’t even debatable. (See: Eliminating the estate tax.) Everything known about Trump’s vague, lightly detailed proposal points to obvious and sizable tax breaks for Trump and his super-rich friends.

Yet Cohn appeared on “Good Morning America” with George Stephanopoulos and stressed the opposite. And this has become the norm for the Trump White House: Lie about everything, even the public policy centerpieces of its agenda.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Can you guarantee that President Trump won’t get a tax cut under this plan?

COHN: George, when we’ve looked at the tax plan, and we’ve looked at what it does for Americans, we are very confident that Americans are getting a great deal here. […]

STEPHANOPOULOS: Will the wealthy get a tax cut or not?

COHN: The wealthy are not getting a tax cut under our plan.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s not the evidence that’s out there so far.

“The wealthy are not getting a tax cut under our plan.” – Pres. Trump’s top Economic Adviser Gary Cohn to @GStephanopoulos on new tax plan pic.twitter.com/QYv7kItcas

— Good Morning America (@GMA) September 28, 2017

But what about the middle class? Will they be hit with a tax increase in order to pay for the looming largess heading the 1 percent’s way if Trump’s give-away is passed into law?

Politically, this would be an impossible sale: raising taxes on families that make $50,000 in order to lighten the tax load for families that make $5 million?

Yet that’s precisely what the White House is planning.

“Trump has also pledged repeatedly that the plan would reduce the taxes paid by middle-class families, but he has not provided enough details to evaluate that claim,” The New York Times reports. “While some households would probably get tax cuts, others could end up paying more.”

On the key point of the middle class, Cohn, when pressed, momentarily conceded the truth:

Gary Cohn talks state & local deductions; pressed by @GStephanopoulos, won't guarantee that middle class families won't see tax increase pic.twitter.com/9wj8IVWqSw

— David Wright (@DavidWright_7) September 28, 2017

As Lily Batchelder, the former deputy director of President Barack Obama’s National Economic Council, spells it out, “In broad brush strokes, they’re doing nothing for the bottom 35 percent, they’re doing very little and possibly raising taxes on the middle class, and they’ve specified tax cuts for the wealthy.”

That’s a nearly impossible formula to sell to the American people. No wonder the White House is leaning into the lies.