Dem: Trump ‘betraying’ his own voters

President Trump’s signature legislative achievement in his first year in office, a massive tax overhaul that slashed corporate and individual tax rates, represented a “betrayal” of the voters who sent him to office, a key Democratic senator said.

In an interview for The Hill’s Power Politics podcast, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) took aim at the tax-reform package that passed late last year on party-line votes.

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“This bill ended up being a total betrayal of Trump’s claim that he was there for the forgotten Americans. He wasn’t there for the forgotten Americans. He was there for folks on Wall Street, big corporations, and he’s going to pile more debt onto families across the country,” Van Hollen said. “He actually betrayed all the people who believed that he was going to deliver for them.”

Van Hollen said he worried that Republicans will use the tax overhaul to justify cuts to massive entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

“The step one was tax cuts for the big corporations. Step two will be coming after Medicare,” Van Hollen said. “In the same budget that set up a tax cut that overwhelmingly goes to corporate America, they call for dramatic cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. It’s right there in their budget for the fiscal year that we’re in right now.”

“We would like to see the Republicans make a commitment — they could do it today — that there will be no cuts this year to Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security. We’re going to ask them to make that pledge.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) has voiced support for those cuts in the past, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said he will only bring up legislation that enjoys bipartisan support in 2018, an election year.

The tax package passed in December had little public support, according to public opinion surveys. But in the weeks after the package passed, President Trump’s approval ratings have ticked slightly higher, though they remain lower than all of his predecessors at this point in their terms.

Power Politics, hosted by The Hill’s Alexis Simendinger, is available on Saturday mornings.

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