***To read the full blog, please check out the complete post on NewsBusters***
After the White House and Congressional Republicans rolled out their framework for tax reform last week, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin made the rounds on the network morning shows to beat back the hysterical liberal media criticisms. When he appeared NBC’s Meet the Press, the Secretary had to content with a ludicrous Chuck Todd who smeared the tax reform proposal as a Houdini act and outlandishly claimed that no study had ever shown that tax cuts equal economic growth.
“I would say the way this was rolled out, it seems as if you're making promises that if you can keep them all, it would be -- you would get -- it would be like Houdini trying to do this,” Todd chided after hitting Mnuchin with the White House’s response to the Puerto Rico crisis for several minutes. “Explain to me the philosophy. Is everybody going to get a tax cut no matter their income level,” he demanded to know.
Todd performed a disappearance act of his own. The part of the framework that called for the doubling of the standard deductible ($12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for families) was nowhere to be seen. Also absent was any mention of the elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax, an elimination that actually had bipartisan support because to was sweeping up the middle-class since it was only pegged to 1969 income levels.
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