Trump 'open' to slashing taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare: report

Former President Donald Trump is toying with the idea of promising a large tax cut for the middle class as part of his 2024 re-election campaign — and one way he might do it is to raid the funding for Social Security and Medicare.

According to Gram Slattery of Reuters, "Donald Trump has indicated to advisers he is keen on a new middle-class tax cut should he return to the White House, two people familiar with the discussions said, an initiative that could appeal to voters but could also worsen America's yawning budget deficit. Among the ideas that advisers have presented to the former president is a cut to the federal payroll tax, said one of those people, a move that could lower the flow of money into the Social Security and Medicare trust funds and open Trump to criticism from Democrats that he is torpedoing the safety net for elderly Americans."

Trump has not settled on the idea of cutting the money from payroll taxes, noted the report — however, "he is open to the idea."

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"Other ideas that Trump's close economic advisers are discussing include an increase in the so-called standard deduction on year-end tax returns and a cut to the marginal income tax rate for middle-income households, one of the people with knowledge of those conversations said," the report noted. "It was unclear if either of those ideas had been presented to Trump directly."

The former president is no stranger to tax cuts. In his first term, one of his most significant legislative accomplishments was a sweeping tax package that cut over a trillion dollars from individual and corporate income taxes, as well as a number of other changes to the tax code like a limit on deductions for state and local taxes. This bill broadly lowered taxes for almost all Americans, but the vast majority of the benefits flowed to the top 1 percent of income earners, making it controversial.

Trump himself has often been accused of tax evasion in his personal finances, including about a mysterious loan raised during his civil fraud trial in New York that may not in fact exist.