Former Vice President Mike Pence has a message for his old boss.
Pence is urging President Donald Trump, under whom he served as vice president in Trump’s first administration, not to raise the tax rate on wealthy Americans.
Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the signature domestic achievement of his first White House term, is scheduled to expire this year if it’s not extended by Congress.
The Trump White House and some congressional Republicans for weeks have mulled letting the tax reductions on the wealthy sunset as a way to pay for the rest of the tax cuts as well as Trump’s other pricey second-term priorities.
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And the president, during a Wednesday phone call, pushed House Speaker Mike Johnson to raise taxes on the highest income earners and close the carried interest loophole in the reconciliation process, Fox News Digital confirmed. The development was first reported Thursday by Punchbowl News.
A source familiar with Trump’s thinking said Trump is considering allowing the rate on individuals making $2.5 million or more to increase by 2.6%, from 37% to 39.6%.
But Pence, a fiscal conservative and budget hawk during his long political career in the House of Representatives, as Indiana governor and as vice president, strongly cautioned against upping the rates on the highest earners.
“Any suggestion that I’ve heard among some in and around the administration that we raise the top margin rate, the so-called millionaires tax, would be an enormous tax increase on small business owners across America,” Pence said. “It needs to be opposed.”
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And the former vice president, in an interview with Fox News Digital this week, argued that “the majority of people that file taxes of a million dollars are simply individuals that own businesses, and they file their taxes as an individual, but then plow that money back into their company. If you raise that top margin, it would be an enormous tax increase on small business America.”
“Let’s make all the Trump-Pence tax cuts permanent. That’s a way to really lay a foundation to grow the economy in the days ahead,” Pence urged.
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Pence, who was interviewed in Boston after receiving the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage award, gave “President Trump all the credit in the world for an historic victory last November, and for sparing the country one more liberal Democrat administration.”
He also praised Trump “not only for his victory, but for securing our southern border, for restoring morale and recruitment in our military, for taking the fight to the Houthis.”
But he argued that “I truly do believe that some of the other steps the president is taking away from that conservative agenda should be a concern that would work against his legacy and ultimately the success of our party or our country. And so we’re going to continue to be a voice against them.
“I really do believe that for prosperity … for the success of our country, we need to stick to those time-honored principles of strong defense, American leadership on the world stage, less government, less taxes, traditional moral values and the right to life, and I’m going to be a voice for that,” Pence added.
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