Trump Wants to Cut Taxes for the Rich. Again.

If he thinks it’s a good midterm strategy, he’s wrong.

It’s election time, so the White House, according to Bloomberg’s Katy O’Donnell and Caitlin Reilly, is weighing whether to give the rich more tax breaks. Republicans! They just can’t help themselves!

Cutting taxes on the rich is a uniquely unpopular idea. Since 1939, Gallup has been asking, “Do you think our government should or should not redistribute wealth by heavy taxes on the rich”? In 1939, 54 percent said “should not” and only 35 percent said “should,” even though the Great Depression was raging and the New Deal was well along. Since 1939, though, the should nots have been falling and the shoulds have been rising. Today, a 52 percent majority say the government should redistribute wealth by taxing the rich heavily, and a 47 percent minority say it should not. (The current vogue for democratic socialism isn’t happening in a vacuum.)

If you put the question in a manner more appetizing to moderates—do the rich pay their fair share?—61 percent say no, according to an April Pew Research Center poll. Fully 81 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaners also say no, along with a not-inconsiderable 41 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaners.

Given these realities, the White House, if it endorses a tax cut, will try to sell it as a middle-class tax cut. The Democrats have tax-cut proposals of their own that target lower-income people. I’ve explained previously that I prefer the alternative approach of cutting payroll taxes at the low end and eliminating the Social Security tax ceiling at the high end. But earlier this month my New Republic colleague Monica Potts made a convincing case that the Democrats’ tax-cut gambit has run its course. So maybe the priority ought to be protecting what revenues we have left and reducing the deficit wherever possible so the bond market doesn’t rage out of control. No tax cut will help with that.

On Tuesday, National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett and Larry Kudlow, who held that post during Trump’s first term, discussed on Fox Business the two tax proposals Trump is contemplating. One is to index the capital gains tax,........

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