Tax cuts not only are helping Americans now but will have a “ripple effect” of new investment across the nation, White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway told conservative activists gathered outside Washington.
“At a very basic principle, it is freedom, it’s that you get to hang on to more of your hard-earned money,” Conway said Friday at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, referring to the tax reform package passed by congressional Republicans and signed into law by President Donald Trump.
“And the fact that this president and this Congress passed a tax cut that means many more Americans will pay zero percent in taxes … and that the first $24,000 for married couples is exempt completely, 100 percent, that means everybody got a tax cut.”
Communities throughout the country will see benefits from lower tax rates for businesses, Conway said:
One thing we haven’t talked about yet because it is fairly new is what the capital investment from these companies is going to mean to your communities. You are looking at about $482 billion in promised capital investment … so that’s about $182 billion, as I see it in our paperwork, of new investment projects that have been committed. So that is going to have a ripple effect across the economy.
Conway, who was Trump’s third and final campaign manager, also said House and Senate Democrats missed an opportunity to stand with their constituents by not voting for the tax legislation:
I just think it is a shame that people were lied to, that the tax [cut] was wasn’t going to happen, couldn’t pass, and if it did that it would benefit the wealthy and well connected, where the previous code already had. And No. 2, that you couldn’t get a single Democrat to vote for it.
I think that’s regrettable, because we would like these measures to be bipartisan. I don’t know how many of those senators and members of Congress are going to go home and explain why their constituents are benefiting directly from this tax cut and they missed the chance to be a part of that.
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has dismissed the income tax cuts for Americans as “crumbs.”
But more than 4 million Americans will receive bonuses and pay raises because of the tax reform law that took effect Jan. 1, House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., estimated.
“These are not crumbs, this is real bread, and I think people are seeing that already,” Conway said.
CPAC, the largest annual national gathering of conservative activists, runs from Thursday to Saturday at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside Washington.