Even Donald Trump’s former chief strategist believes that taxing the rich is a good idea.
In an effort to advance the president’s tax bill and defang Democratic attacks on the administration, Steve Bannon is urging Trump to propose a tax hike on multimillionaires, The Washington Post reported Tuesday night.
“One proposal would allow the top tax rate to revert to its level before the 2017 tax law, from 37 percent to 39.6 percent. (This would raise taxes for those with more than $626,350 in earnings),” according to the Post.
The pitch also suggests adopting a new tax bracket for people earning more than $1 million, as well as an additional tax bracket for individuals earning more than $3 million or $5 million.
“This guts the AOC-Bernie ‘oligarchy tour,’” Bannon told the Post, referring to anti-Trump rallies hosted by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders that drew tens of thousands of people.
“Politically, it’s game, set, match—it’s a no-brainer. This would destroy the Democrats,” Bannon said.
Republicans have had a difficult time penciling out Trump’s massive tax plan, which would massively benefit corporations and billionaires and add an estimated $6.8 trillion to the deficit.
But Bannon has been trying to convince conservatives to tax the rich since at least Trump’s first term, and other members of the party are less than convinced that the idea could advance through a Republican-controlled legislature.
“I don’t see it getting through the Senate Finance Committee—there’s not a chance,” Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the right-leaning American Action Forum research group, told the Post. Holtz-Eakin also predicted that the House would “deflect and say they want to consider all possibilities, but it won’t have the votes.”
“They’ll see this as a punitive tax on rich people for no reason,” Holtz-Eakin said. “They don’t like the politics. They don’t like the economics. They’re not interested.”