Let's hear from Murkowski, Sullivan, Young on Trump's latest tax lies

Rep. Don Young, Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Sen. Dan Sullivan were outspoken champions of the Trump tax cut a year ago, but they became a bit more restrained as the evidence mounted that the big winners of the Republican plan were corporations and the wealthiest people in the nation.

"This bill does what's right for this nation, and the great land will be great again," Young said at the signing ceremony with President Trump. "Thank you, Mr. President."

Young, Murkowski and Sullivan should reveal to Alaskans where they stand on the new claim by Trump that he wants a 10 percent tax cut for middle-income people before the election in two weeks.

They should find the courage to inform Alaskans that Trump is lying and there is no chance of this happening.

“We’re doing it now for middle-income people,” Trump said Monday. “This is not for businesses. It’s for the middle.”

Trump was not telling the truth, as Congress is not in session and there is no tax cut in the offing. The White House later admitted that Trump dreamed it up while speaking in Nevada Saturday.

Here is a portion of a Trump interview Tuesday with the Wall Street Journal, an incoherent ramble in which he repeated his new lies about taxes:

WSJ: Taxes. Your middle-class tax cut, can you say a little bit about where that came from?

Mr. Trump: This is a resolution. Well, this—I’ve been working on this with Kevin Brady for a long time. And because we’re doing so well—we couldn’t have done this originally. I would have put it into the original bill. But we couldn’t have done it originally because we—you know, we’ve become—I mean, we’re doing really well. The numbers are really good.

WSJ: How are you going to define middle class?

Mr. Trump: Well, we’ll define it. We’ll have to—we’ll have to define that. I mean, there is a definition, but we’ll make sure the definition is right.

WSJ: Do you have any thoughts on where that should be?

Mr. Trump: This would not be for business. Now, this would be in addition, because the middle class did very well with the original bill. I would have put this into the original bill, but at that time nobody thought we would do as well as we’re doing—you know, the 4.2 [percent second-quarter GDP growth] and it looks like we’re going to have another good quarter coming up.

WSJ: Then why need it? Why do you need this one, then?

Mr. Trump: Because I think it’s a good thing for the middle class. And don’t forget, that’s money that gets distributed back into the economy. In a different way than a business would do it, but it’s money distributed back into the economy. And we are going to do—we’re doing very well.

WSJ: Do you have any idea where that—should the cutoff be for the middle class?

Mr. Trump: No, I just—we’re going to a 10%. No, that’ll be—that’ll be—will be a great thing for the middle class. I think the middle class deserves it. The middle class has been forgotten for many, many years. I call it the forgotten men and women. They came out, and they like Trump. But the fact is the middle class has been forgotten for many years. And what we’re going to do—this would be a resolution, because they’re out, but we’re doing the resolution now.

WSJ: We can’t do the resolution till they get back.

Mr. Trump: They have to—when they get back, we’ll do the actual filings.

WSJ: And how is this going to be revenue neutral? You mentioned in the pool spray—

Mr. Trump: We have a way. We’re going to—we’re going to announce it at that time, but we think we can make it revenue neutral based on certain—

WSJ: Wall Street Journal readers would really like to know.

Mr. Trump: In fact, if you call Kevin Hassett, let him tell you, because I was going over it. Kevin will give it to you. You know Kevin very well.

WSJ: Yeah.

Mr. Trump: And this is money that comes back, because it’s money that’s going to be spent on buying cars—hopefully cars made in the U.S.A., by the way—but it’s going to be spent on things that we make and sell in the United States.