Stephen Moore Demands Trump Declare Economic Emergency and Cut Payroll Tax
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White House economic adviser Stephen Moore called on President Donald Trump to declare a “national economic emergency” and order the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to stop collecting payroll tax in a Sunday op-ed for the Wall Street Journal.
“Last week Mr. Trump acknowledged that compromising with Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a fool’s errand, because the House won’t agree to anything that boosts growth and job creation,” Moore claimed in the article co-authored with Phil Kerpen, head of the free-market nonprofit advocacy group Committee to Unleash Prosperity. The duo added that the Democratic Party’s plan to address economic issues during the coronavirus pandemic “would sink the economy and imperil Mr. Trump’s reelection.”
“The president needs to pull an end run, and there’s a legal way to do that. He should declare a national economic emergency and announce that the Internal Revenue Service will immediately stop collecting the payroll tax,” Moore declared. “This is technically called a deferral of the tax payments.”
Moore went on to say that President Trump “should order Treasury to put bonds into the Social Security and Medicare trust funds,” arguing, “Since Barack Obama did that in 2011, his vice president would have a hard time explaining his opposition to it now,” and claiming that the action “would flip the political tables.”
“Democrats can’t credibly call it a tax cut for the rich,” he wrote, concluding, “Mr. Trump could cap it at, say, $75,000 of income, so the vast majority of the benefit would go to straight into the wallets of middle- and lower-income workers, almost all of whom pay more payroll than income tax.”
Republicans have repeatedly pushed a payroll tax cut as the answer to the economic woes under the coronavirus pandemic, and have generally fought against direct payouts to affected workers through stimulus packages.
In June, Moore claimed on Fox Business that President Trump would have “no chance” of winning his 2020 reelection campaign if the government continues to give money to affected workers.
“Trump wants payroll tax suspension, as do I, as does Larry Kudlow, as does Steve Forbes, as does Art Laffer, and we are showing that this will create several million new jobs,” said Moore. “Millions of jobs would be created by suspending the payroll tax for the rest of the year.”
“Now, the competing plan is what Pelosi has in her bill, which would be to extend those unemployment benefits, which pay people more money for not working than working. She wants to extend that through January of 2021,” Moore continued, adding, “Donald Trump, if you agree to that, there is no way you are going to be reelected because that plan would destroy eight to ten million jobs because people would not go back to work.”
