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Good afternoon, and welcome back to Press Pass. I get that it can be hard to keep track of the seemingly never-ending chaos in Washington. But at The Bulwark, we want to make sure that you can stay aware of the most important stories in politics without going crazy. Being a truly independent media outlet means we can do the sort of work we think best serves our readers without our coverage being subject to outside interference and pressure. If you’d like to be a part of our growing community, I invite you to consider upgrading your membership to a Bulwark+ subscription. We’d love to have you aboard.
Today’s edition is about why some Democrats—prospective 2028 presidential candidates, specifically—are starting to talk about cutting taxes. Repurposing a longstanding Republican doctrine is certainly one way for a Democrat to carve out a lane for him- or herself well in advance of a crowded primary. But there are some glaring holes in the proposals we’ve seen so far.
In addition, another House Republican has come out against American Muslims. The list of GOP lawmakers whose open bigotry is being ignored by the party’s leadership continues to grow. Lastly, Trump has started handing out the same pair of shoes to almost all the men in the White House, which has of course made them anxious about getting caught wearing different ones. Regular Press Pass readers will know that shoes are maybe the one thing I know better than I know Congress, so read on for further analysis. All that and more, below.
Are Democrats Reaganmaxxing?
Prospective 2028 presidential candidates are proposing major tax cuts. They belong to a different party than you might expect.
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Following a ten-year period that featured two Republican-led, inequitable, deficit-ballooning tax cut bills, some Democrats are attempting to create a new narrative about which party knows what’s best for Americans’ taxes.
In just the past week, Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) have each unveiled a tax reform plan they claim would leave the average worker better off while forcing the ultra-wealthy to pay more into the system. While their proposals differ on a number of points, both call for cutting taxes for a large share of the population—something Democrats have not been historically known for advocating. The proposals enraged progressives who are eager to enter an aggressive rebuilding mode if Democrats regain power in the 2026 and 2028 elections.
“I think just taking the proposals at face value is important at this point,” Will Raderman, a senior policy advisor at the Searchlight Institute, told me in an interview. “And knowing that there’s only so much spending that you can do on new kinds of reforms, I think the attention and effort would be much better suited on other proposals.”
While Raderman praised part of Booker’s plan that would significantly expand the child tax credit, he said there’s likely room for it to be even larger if much of the proposal’s costs weren’t weighed down by such a large standard deduction—that is, the base amount that all taxpayers would be able to earn untaxed under the proposal.
“Could you actually do an even more robust CTC [Child Tax Credit] if you didn’t do the standard deduction components? Could you expand health care and improve health care in a lot of key ways? Could you fix the unemployment system? Could you improve job training pathways?” Raderman added. “I think what’s important to keep in mind is, if part of the proposal costs trillions and trillions of dollars, the ability to actually focus on and do a whole bunch of really important agenda items gets that much harder, and probably means we can’t do those.”
I spoke with Booker about his proposal, which features a $75,000 standard deduction¹ as well as expanded tax credits for low-income earners and Americans with children. When I asked about the holes in his plan like the ones Raderman pointed out, Booker pushed back, arguing that overall, “the median earner is gonna see an eighty-five percent cut on their taxes, which is significant.”
He added that his plan “is equitable in the sense that you’re making sure that working people get to keep more of their money . . . a significant amount.”
“The Democratic party has got to get its act together and stop thinking that when a bold idea comes forward, it means that all the other important things don’t get done,” Booker said. “This is the biggest unrigging of our tax system that there is.”
However, neither Van Hollen’s nor Booker’s plan is meant to be ready for the legislative process right out of the box. When a prospective presidential candidate introduces a proposal—particularly a tax code overhaul—of this magnitude, their deeper goal is to advance a narrative about fairness and the dignity of work for the sorts of people whose votes the candidate might need to win someday. The proposal itself is not expected to also receive a committee mark up, floor vote, and due consideration in the House while Republicans control the government. Amplify, not codify, is the key verb.
In the lead-up to the 2016 elections,² Republican presidential hopefuls floated all kinds of ideas that were poorly received or made little practical sense. Former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal proposed the elimination of the standard deduction and a two percent tax rate for the lowest earners in order to be able to use the tagline that “every American has some skin in this game.” Reality television celebrity Donald Trump wanted to eliminate the Head of Household filing status. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) made his proposal into spectacle by printing out physical copies of the U.S. tax code and then shredding the stacks of paper with a chainsaw and a woodchipper. Later, Paul would continue to ply this theme by shooting the tax code with a rifle.