EXCLUSIVE – The Democratic National Committee unveiled a billboard campaign attacking former President Donald Trump on his tax policy ahead of his visit to Flint, Michigan.
The DNC told the Washington Examiner multiple billboards across Flint are targeting Trump for allegedly raising “taxes on typical middle-class families to the tune of nearly $4,000 a year.” The media campaign is an effort to tie Project 2025, a conservative agenda platform proposal spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, to Trump’s economic agenda should he win reelection.
The DNC’s billboard rollout comes in anticipation of Trump’s town hall in the Michigan city on Tuesday evening. It marks a continuation of a strategy Democrats launched in early July to target the former president on the “extreme Project 2025 agenda.”
“Donald Trump has always put the interests of Michigan’s working families last, and now he’s pushing a new tax scam to benefit the ultra-wealthy and big corporations,” DNC spokeswoman Stephanie Justice said in a statement as she claimed that “Trump’s Project 2025 plan would raise taxes on typical middle-class families to the tune of nearly $4,000 a year.” Her comments came as Trump has repeatedly labeled efforts to link himself to the conservative blueprint as “pure disinformation.”
Trump’s campaign is not affiliated with Project 2025, but several officials who used to work for his presidential administration had a part in the road map, and his press secretary participated in a recruiting video for the foundation.
Justice contrasted Vice President Kamala Harris’s economic policy to Trump’s as she fights to win the battleground state this November.
“Michigan voters will reject Trump and his economic agenda that left them in the dust once already and instead send Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz to the White House so that they can continue fighting for Michigan families, for lower costs, and to build the middle class,” she said.
Polls show that Harris is in a dead heat with Trump to win Michigan, a state the former president narrowly lost to President Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election. The DNC’s billboard campaign in Flint comes as Harris and her affiliates have poured millions into Michigan this election cycle.
Economy is likely an issue of high importance to Flint voters; the poverty rate in the city is at 40%, making it the eighth poorest city in the country, according to a U.S. News report.
A recent CBS poll found Michigan voters rated the economy as their top issue this election cycle. A survey conducted earlier this month indicated Michigan residents trusted Trump over Harris on the economy, indicating the issue is a weak spot for the vice president.
Trump has expressed support for a flurry of tax cuts should he win a second term in the Oval Office. The former president’s promise last week to eliminate income taxes on overtime pay comes after he pledged to end taxes on Social Security benefits. He also announced a “no tax on tips” plan in June.
The Harris campaign has attacked Trump’s policies as tax cuts for the wealthy.
“Donald Trump has no plan for you,” the vice president said during last Tuesday’s debate with the former president. “It’s all about tax breaks for the richest people.”
Trump has often heralded the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act he signed into law as president as a blueprint for how he would govern in a second term.
The legislation marked a massive overhaul of the country’s tax system, lowering most individual income tax rates and lowering the corporate income tax rate from 35 to 21%. Individual income tax brackets will revert to 2017 levels upon the law’s expiration next year.
Harris criticized the Trump tax cuts last week, warning “his plan is to do what he has done before, which is to provide a tax cut for billionaires and big corporations.”
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Over 80% of taxpayers received tax cuts through the TCJA, according to the Tax Policy Center, a left-of-center Washington think tank.
Harris unveiled components of her own economic plan during a North Carolina last month. The vice president doubled down on branding her plans as an “Opportunity Economy”, announcing she would support expanding small business tax deductions for startup expenses in September and previewed raising the capital gains tax in a move she said would “make our tax code more fair.”
