Steve Cortes doesn’t want the message to get in the way of the reality of what the proposed tax reform plan could mean.
“I don’t think we Republicans have done a great job of messaging on this,” Cortes, a former member of President Donald Trump’s Hispanic Advisory Council and a Fox News contributor, said during a recent appearance on the "Chicago’s Morning Answer" radio show on WIND, co-hosted by Dan Proft, who also is a principal in Local Government Information Services, which owns this publication.
“We have been mired down in details,” Cortes said. “I want to focus on the big picture, which is economic growth. For wage earners it has been a tough decade of slow growth. Once businesses know the tax cuts are coming they will be more willing to reinvest, allowing them to bring onshore those profits and invest them. I think that is going to unleash a torrent of economic activity and expansion that we haven’t seen since the '90s.”
Cortes said the plan that will lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent isn’t perfect, but he defends it as the best thing the Trump administration could hope to get passed given the polarized climate in Washington.
“I think it’s a very solid tax plan, but not everything I want on the individual side,” he said. “I’d like something more aggressive and something with more simplification on the individual side. On the business side, I almost don’t like the term corporate tax. I think when you say corporate, for most people that evokes thoughts General Electric, massive corporations who first of all don’t pay that tax. They pay a much lower effective tax rate because of legal tax avoidance. Who does pay (corporate) tax are small and medium size business that are trying to grow.”
Cortes said an onerous tax code and excessive regulations have conspired to rob many of their entrepreneurial spirit, a trend he hopes to see dissipate under Trump's presidency.
“President Trump has already taken care of regulations, now we’ve got to take care of the second part,” Cortes said. “I think that is going to allow small and medium businesses to grow and prosper.”
Separate tax plans have already advanced in both chambers and are now in committee where representatives from both sides are attempting to iron out the differences.
CNN has reported some of the differences between the two bills is the Senate bill sunsets tax breaks for individuals in 2025, while the House bill makes all such cuts permanent; the House bill enacts its 20 percent corporate rate in 2018, a full year before the Senate’s version does so; and the Senate bill repeals Obamacare's individual mandate, while the House bill does not.
“The tax code has to unleash the entrepreneurial power of America,” Cortes said. “That’s already happening under President Trump and it will accelerate under this tax package. If we throw in a more sensible and fair tax structure like this one, I believe the economy in 2018 is just going to soar.”
Trump has continued to press lawmakers to have the bill on his desk for signature by Christmas. The measure would represent the first major piece of legislation signed into law by the administration since Trump took office, bolstered by a GOP backed Congress, roughly a year ago.
Alerts Sign-up