Brown hopes to work with Trump on taxes

Published 8:06 am Tuesday, October 24, 2017

COLUMBUS — U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said he is willing to support President Donald Trump’s tax plan, if it offers relief for the middle class.

Appearing Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Brown, a member of the Senate Finance Committee who attended a meeting on tax reform at the White House last week, was asked by host Dana Bash if he stands by his prior criticism that Trump “looks out only for Donald Trump” and favored tax breaks for the rich.

“Well, it’s not out of step at all with what my party wants to do.,” Brown said of Trump. “The president’s made some comments in the last two weeks (…) where he says he wants to reward those corporations — that pay good wages and do their work and do their manufacturing in this country, and he wants to do a tax break for the middle class.”

Email newsletter signup

Brown said the Republicans’ leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, does not favor this approach, though, and said he used the meeting at the White House to ask Trump to support the Patriotic Corporation Act,” legislation Brown has sponsored in the chamber.

“[It] simply says, if you pay good wages, and you don’t outsource jobs, you do your production in this country, you get a lower tax rate, and my Working Families Tax Relief Act, which will put thousands of dollars in the pockets of middle- class families and working-class working families, the president’s paid lip service to that,” Brown said.

He urged Trump to work with Democrats on the issue.

“He’s at a fork in the road,” Brown said. “If he throws in with McConnell and the billionaires, Democrats don’t support it. If he chooses to fight for the middle class and help those companies keep production in the United States — not the bill McConnell has — if he does that, it’s a bipartisan bill.

That’s what I have been saying all along.”

Brown said he hopes Trump will not listen solely to advisors in his own party.

“The people closest to the president whispering in his ear all want to do trickle-down economics, big tax cuts for the wealthiest people in the country, and hope it trickles down,” Brown said. “They say it’s budget-neutral, and they say it will raise wages.  It’s never done that throughout history. It didn’t do that from Hoover to Bush to Bush II to anybody else.”

The senator said he was encouraged by the meeting with Trump.

“We know what the pressure on him is,” Brown said. “But I know what he said in that meeting. And I heard him say that he likes the Patriot Corporation Act and he likes the idea of a real working family tax relief act.”