The “heart and soul” of President Trump’s tax reform plan is cutting business taxes, writer and economic analyst Stephen Moore said in Dallas Tuesday, adding, “Everything else is just window dressing.”
Moore said the GOP tax-reform framework—which calls for slashing the corporate rate from 35 percent to 20 percent—has a 50/50 chance of passing this year and, if that doesn’t happen, a 75 percent chance of passage by next spring.
Once the plan is signed into law, said Moore, a former Wall Street Journal writer who was a senior economic adviser to the Trump presidential campaign, “I think we’ll see 3.5 to 4 percent growth. The economy has shifted into higher gear already—3.1 percent in the second quarter—and we haven’t gotten the tax cut done yet.”
During a panel discussion called “Navigating Washington Under the Trump/Pence Administration” at Old Parkland, Moore said Trump has “always been underestimated by his opponents. … Oftentimes the experts are wrong, so don’t underestimate Donald Trump.
“The man is crazy like a fox,” added Moore, who’s currently a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. “Oftentimes there’s a method to his madness.”
Moore was one of five panelists on a program presented by law firm Barnes & Thornburg LLP. The others were Jefferson Rees, vice president, legal E&P operations/litigation with Pioneer Natural Resources; Barnes & Thornburgh Managing Partner Robert Grand; Bill Jones, a partner in the law firm’s Government Services and Finance Department; and Holly Reed, managing director, external affairs, with Texas Central Partners.
Reed called Texas Central’s Dallas-Houston bullet-train project a “poster child” for the national infrastructure conversation.
