Last month, weeks before signing into law the most sweeping changes to corporate and individual tax rates in decades, President Trump promised the tax bill would help Republicans politically. “I think people see that and they’re seeing it more and more, and the more they learn about [the tax bill], the more popular it becomes,” he told reporters. It was a refrain Republican leaders repeated ad nauseum: once people feel the effects of the tax bill, they’ll love it! “When we get this done . . . that’s what’s going to produce the results,” House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters just before the bill passed. “And results are going to be what makes this popular,” he added. It was an argument many reporters bought, as evidenced by the Washington Post’s credulous headline, “The tax bill is likely to become more popular after passage. Here’s how Republicans plan to sell it.”
The above excerpt was originally published in The National Interest.
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