President Donald Trump will bring five American families to the White House to show how they would benefit from his tax overhaul Wednesday in a speech aides said would amount to a closing argument for the legislation.
Despite strong support for the tax overhaul among Republican lawmakers, polls show the plan is unpopular with Americans amid perceptions tax reductions are skewed toward the wealthy.
About 52 percent of Americans believe their own family will be hurt financially more than helped by the Republican tax plan, while 30 percent said they’d be helped, according to a Marist Poll taken Dec. 4 through Dec. 7. Sixty percent said the measure mostly helps the rich.
Two senior administration officials who briefed reporters Tuesday criticized public polling data as skewed and predicted the plan’s popularity would grow as Americans focus on specific provisions that would benefit their own families. Trump will use the visiting families, who will join him in the White House’s grand foyer, to illustrate provisions likely to benefit families across the country, they said.
Trump’s address will also link the tax overhaul to his broader economic agenda and goal of reinvigorating the American dream, said the officials, who insisted on anonymity to preview his remarks.
Lawmakers on the congressional conference committee working to reconcile differences between the House and Senate versions of the tax legislation will have lunch with the president at the White House before the speech, Trump spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said.
