They don’t just reduce poverty; they pay for school lunches and heat in January.
4. Corporate Minimums and Clarity: Close loopholes. Set a floor. If a Fortune 500 company posts billions in profit, it should pay something back. No more zero-tax years.
5. No Blanket VAT or Broad Tariffs: If you want a consumption tax, cap it and pair it with rebates. If you want tariffs, use them strategically and with an endgame. Don’t build an economic wall and pretend it’s a ladder.
“Tax income, not survival. Reward labor, not loopholes.”
The Cost of Getting It Wrong
Extending TCJA provisions would open a $3.3 trillion crater in the federal budget. Project 2025’s full slate? Somewhere between $5 and $12 trillion in lost revenue. That doesn’t vanish—it comes out of programs like Medicaid, Social Security, infrastructure, and education.
That’s not theoretical. That’s your insulin. Your kid’s school lunch. Your mother’s rent support. These aren’t luxuries—they’re the scaffolding of American life.
So who wins?
The top 1%, with six-figure tax breaks. The top 0.1%, with millions in capital gains relief. And the corporations that get to keep more and contribute less—forever.
Who loses?
Everyone else.
“The scaffolding of American life is not a rounding error.”
This isn’t about fiscal conservatism. It’s about control. You drain the safety net, and people get desperate. You drain the treasury, and you justify more cuts. You tilt the system far enough, and democracy starts to look like a luxury, not a right.
A tax system tells you what kind of country you live in. One where everyone pays their share? Or one where wealth floats and labor sinks?
If Trump’s tax vision becomes reality, it won’t just balance the budget on your back—it’ll break it.