8/28/2017

GARY COHN/STEVE MNUCHIN/TAXES/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “Gary D. Cohn and Steven Mnuchin have spent months behind closed doors with Republican congressional leaders sketching the contours of an elaborate and politically difficult tax overhaul that is President Trump’s top priority.
Mr. Trump hopes to jump-start the process on Wednesday [8-30-17], traveling to Springfield, Mo., for a speech calling for large tax reductions and a long-anticipated revamping of the code. But he has largely left it to Mr. Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, and Mr. Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, both new to government, to devise and execute a winning legislative strategy. And their involvement has some conservatives for whom tax cuts are a signal issue deeply concerned…
Already, their ambitions have drifted from the president’s original mark: A 15 percent corporate tax rate proposed in April is now likely to move to the 20 to 25 percent range, say two people familiar with the officials’ recent thinking. And a proposed 35 percent ceiling on the highest personal income tax rate could be shelved altogether, leaving the current 39.6 percent cap intact.
For Mr. Cohn and Mr. Mnuchin, quiet competitors since their days as new partners at Goldman Sachs more than two decades ago, the task is a consequential test of whether real-world experience in finance has equipped them to carry out a delicate political negotiation, and whether two New Yorkers who have been lavish supporters of Democrats can succeed in Mr. Trump’s Washington.”

-Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Kate Kelly, “Two Bankers Are Selling Trump’s Tax Plan. Is Congress Buying?,” The New York Times online, Aug. 28, 2017