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Trump taunts Democrats as he touts tax reform win

By LOUIS NELSON

President Donald Trump predicted Thursday that the package of tax cuts passed Wednesday by Congress “will soon be kicking in and will speak for themselves,” proving wrong Democrats who he said “hate these big cuts” and the media, who he said “is desperate to write badly” about the White House-backed legislation.

“The Massive Tax Cuts, which the Fake News Media is desperate to write badly about so as to please their Democrat bosses, will soon be kicking in and will speak for themselves,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Companies are already making big payments to workers. Dems want to raise taxes, hate these big Cuts!”

Trump hosted a pep rally of sorts Wednesday on the White House’s South Lawn, gathering Republicans from both houses of Congress behind him as they celebrated the passage of a package of tax reforms and cuts that the president and GOP leaders have argued will stimulate the economy and make U.S. businesses more competitive globally.

The bill, which the president is expected to sign, is the first major legislative victory for Trump and the culmination of a career-long goal for House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), long a tax policy wonk who once served as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. Wrapped up in the legislation were other GOP priorities, including a repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate and opening Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Reserve for oil drilling.

The legislation passed through Congress without the support of any Democrats, who have characterized the bill as a give-away to corporations and to the wealthy while offering relatively little for the middle class. Polling conducted before the bill’s passage has shown Americans mostly siding with Democrats in their view of the GOP legislation, although Republicans have argued that opinions of it will quickly change once the tax cuts go into effect.

Already on Wednesday, a handful of major companies announced plans to hand out bonuses, raise wages or otherwise reward employees in the wake of the tax cut legislation’s success on Capitol Hill. AT&T, Boeing, Comcast, Wells Fargo were among the companies to make such announcements, which were celebrated Thursday morning by counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway, who said Democrats’ argument that the tax cuts would hurt working class Americans was “upended hours after it passed.”

“It was the very first commitment of the tax break from these companies. they reinvested it right back into their employees immediately,” she said on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” Thursday morning. “So many of those businesses are headquartered and/or have a presence in the states of Democratic senators who could not muster a yes vote for this historic tax plan.”

“And think about that. You go back home, as a senator of that state where Boeing is, where Wells Fargo is, where Comcast is,” she continued. “And these folks are going to say ‘I thought you said you had to be against this because it was going to help the wealthy? I don't consider myself wealthy’ those employees are going to say, ‘and I'm grateful that this president and that Republican Congress passed it.’”