How to Fix the GOP Tax Plan
Blue-state taxpayers are hopping mad about the loss of their state and local tax deductions. The latest Wall Street Journal / NBC poll shows that the voters hit hardest by the GOP tax hikes moving furthest toward the Democrats. While the nation as a whole leans 10 points more Democratic than in 2014, college-educated voters favor Democrats by 16 more points than they did four years ago.
You can see why those voters are so mad. From their point of view, the tax plan looks like a scheme to shift the cost of government from the truly wealthy onto the merely affluent.
And you can see, too, the temptation to Democratic opponents. The Republican tax plan is the most nakedly sectional revenue measure the United States has seen since the high-tariff era before the Great Depression. Even of American federalism’s “makers” and “takers” looked like the Trump-Clinton map in reverse, with states like California, New Jersey, and New York the biggest net contributors, and states like Kentucky, Alabama, and Mississippi the biggest net beneficiaries. The Republican plan loads even more of those costs on blue states: The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the federal government will cost taxpayers there almost $670 billion over the next 10 years by limiting the deductibility of state and local taxes and of mortgage interest.
