GOP tax proposals tilt to rich despite populist rhetoric

Yet all three Republican presidential candidates have offered tax proposals that would, for reasons such as nomination politics and tax rate realities, benefit overwhelmingly the wealthiest.

Michael Strain of the conservative American Enterprise Institute said Republicans have good reason to push for across-the-board cuts, despite the inevitable benefit to the wealthy.

John Cogan, a Stanford economist who served in the Reagan administration and consulted on the Bush plan, argued that the tax reductions can help cure the inequality that critics contend they exacerbate.

On Thursday, he brushed aside Democratic criticisms that the proposal was a giveaway to his wealthy donors and could increase the deficit, under his own supporters' estimates, by more than $3 trillion.

To help middle- and working-class families, he would double the standard deduction and raise the Earned Income tax Credit.

Bush surprised observers by pledging to eliminate a tax break that benefits investment managers — a small but symbolically potent change to a Wall Street benefit that comes weeks after rival Donald Trump called for such a move.