Democrats are playing with fire in trying to reclaim tax cuts from Republicans

Soul-searching within the Democratic party is to be expected after its loss in the 2024 election. Donald Trump’s edge over Kamala Harris in voters’ perceptions of economic competence (perplexing though it now appears following a year of erratic policymaking) was bound to inspire a call to rethink the party platform. Yet the second-guessing is steering the Democrats down a dangerous path to embracing a tax-cutting strategy that risks defeating the project to enable a healthier, more equitable society. The most prominent proposal bouncing around Democratic circles comes in a bill from Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland senator. In a nutshell, it proposes cutting taxes for Americans earning up to $80,500 ($161,000 for married couples) and funding the $1.6tn dollar hole this would leave in the budget over a decade with a new surtax on Americans making more than $1m. It is politically smart – a deft response to the tax cuts, on tips, overtime, car loans and social security, that Trump offered up last year in his One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Middle-class Americans, in the 40th to 80th percentile of the income scale, would save, on average, about $1,500 in taxes in 2026 under Van Hollen’s proposal – paid for mainly by the very rich in the top 0.1% of the distribution, who would see their taxes go up by an average of $1.2m, according to the Penn-Wharton budget model . …