Heritage Fellow and Board Member Inspire Trump’s Tax Reform Ideas

HERITAGE IMPACT

Heritage Fellow and Board Member Inspire Trump’s Tax Reform Ideas

May 18, 2017

The White House released a one-page tax-reform outline in late April. Photo: iStock

An op-ed in The New York Times by four leading conservatives inspired President Donald Trump’s outline for tax reform, according to The Hill. Two of the op-ed’s authors are affiliated with The Heritage Foundation.

Stephen Moore is a distinguished visiting fellow in Heritage’s Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity and Steve Forbes has been a member of Heritage’s Board of Trustees since 2001.

The Hill writes:

In April, Stephen Moore, Larry Kudlow, Steve Forbes and Arthur Laffer wrote an op-ed in The New York Times urging the administration to advance tax-reform legislation "with urgency."
 

Someone in the White House alerted Trump to the piece, and Trump then told his staff to make a tax plan that resembles the op-ed, according to Politico's report.
 

One week after the op-ed was published, the White House released a plan that has a number of similarities to the recommendations from Moore, Kudlow, Forbes and Laffer.
 

For example, Trump's plan proposes lowering the tax rate for corporations and small businesses to 15 percent.
 

Trump's tax plan also has some differences from his campaign advisers' piece as well. The advisers had suggested that Trump tackle business tax cuts first, but the White House's proposal addresses proposes tax cuts for both businesses and individuals.
 

Moore told Politico that White House officials told him that his op-ed got Trump moving on tax reform.
 

“I’ve probably written 1,000 op-eds in my life, but that might have been the most impactful,” he said.

 

Read the op-ed.