Democratic Senator Brown Attacks Trump Capital Gains Tax Cut Bid

A Democratic senator is pushing back against the Trump administration’s plans to cut taxes by indexing capital gains to inflation, a move that he says would only help the wealthy and be illegal.

“We urge you to reject reported plans to use questionable authority to -- yet again -- lavish tax cuts upon our country’s wealthiest, while middle class families and working people continue to see costs rise and wages stagnate,” Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio wrote to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a letter dated Thursday.  Nearly a dozen Democratic senators signed it.

The letter cited data from the Penn Wharton Budget Model, which showed that a reduction in capital gains tax would amount to a $102 billion tax cut, 86 percent of which would flow to the top 1 percent of taxpayers.