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President Donald Trump
President Donald Trump surprised major members of his administration with a promise to deliver a tax plan last Wednesday, according to a new report.According to Politico's Josh Dawsey, Tara Palmeri, and Ben White, the Treasury Department and White House officials scrambled to complete the tax plan before the artificial deadline.
In an interview with the Associated Press on April 21, Trump promised to release the tax plan the following week, part of an attempt to show progress on his promised "biggest tax cut in history" before his 100th day in office. But that had not been conveyed to administration officials beforehand, according to Politico, which cited numerous White House and Treasury sources.
According to the report, Treasury officials had wanted to work out a tax plan with more details to unveil sometime over the summer. At the time Trump gave the AP interview, no text of the plan had been written, and officials on both the Treasury and White House side worked through the weekend to get the plan out by the deadline set by Trump.
"Nobody wanted to do this now. We weren't ready to do this now," an administration official told Politico. "But we weren't given any choice."
Instead of a long, fleshed-out plan, Mnuchin and National Economic Council director Gary Cohn rolled out a one-page outline that lacked key details.
According to the report, the push to get a House vote on the GOP bill to overhaul healthcare and a possible executive order on the North American Free Trade Agreement followed similar patterns, with little detail and forewarning given to administration and congressional officials.