The Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans are working behind closed doors to negotiate a secretive tax plan. While they won’t let Americans see what’s in their plan, we know their ultimate goal isn’t the middle-class tax relief they are selling to the America people. Instead, it’s a massive handout to the wealthiest Americans and big corporations.

We’ve seen this playbook before. When Republicans didn’t want Americans to see their healthcare bill that took coverage away from millions to pay for a massive tax cut for the rich, they kept it hidden until the last second. Now they’re doubling down on that same strategy with a hidden tax plan that will benefit rich corporations at the expense of working families.   

Six Republicans from the Trump Administration and Congress are working behind closed doors in a secretive process to draft a tax bill.

Politico: “The short-term budget agreement came just one day after Republicans tried to generate momentum on taxes with a much-publicized meeting between Trump and the so-called Big Six now working on a plan behind closed doors.”

Roll Call: “Closed-door process might threaten tax timeline in Senate.”

Reuters: “Mnuchin is one of a six-member Republican team that has been negotiating a tax plan behind closed doors for months, excluding Democrats and producing only a few pages of basic principles.”

Roll Call: “While there is a renewed commitment to get a tax overhaul complete this year, Republican senators expressed concern that the secretive process that ultimately doomed the effort to repeal the 2010 health care law will happen again.”

Politico: “’My conversations with the White House as well as the speaker [are], ‘Let's make some decisions and start debating the merits of those rates and expensing models and everything that goes into a tax reform package,’’ Meadows said. ‘To allow the Big Six or the Secret Six to negotiate something, then to give everyone a binary choice, is not something that will necessarily represent a broad swath of the GOP conference.’”

While Republicans insist on hiding the details of their tax plan, we know they share one common goal: giving a massive tax cut to the rich and big corporations.

Washington Post: “President Trump is set to open a fall debate over taxes with a populist sales pitch for a bill that doesn’t yet exist. Republican tax negotiators aimed to spend August forging agreement on a sweeping rewrite of the code. Outwardly, at least, they’re wrapping the month with more questions than answers. It also appears likely, based on the moves that GOPers have made in the debate so far, that they plan to revise the code in such a way that its shifts more of the burden away from wealthy earners.”

Vox: “The tax reform push currently underway is a purely partisan affair, driven by GOP committee chairs and leadership with some input from Gary Cohn at the White House and Steve Mnuchin at the Treasury Department. And while business executives aren’t exactly sure what they’ll come up with, they are sure that they’re going to like it… And working in tandem with unified Republican Party control of Washington, they are likely to get what they want.”

Huffington Post: “Trump gave few details at a Wednesday speech in Springfield, Missouri, instead offering very broad priorities: a tax break for the middle class; fewer ‘loopholes’; bringing home companies’ overseas profits; a much lower corporate tax rate. Only on that final component did Trump attach a specific number – 15 percent as a goal, down from the current 35 percent maximum. And it is that piece that would provide a huge benefit to the wealthiest Americans, who own a disproportionate share of the nation’s businesses, either directly or through shares of stock.”

It's no surprise that Trump and the GOP want to keep the details of their tax plan secret – because it isn’t the populist, middle-class tax package they keep promising the American people. 

Politico: “President Donald Trump’s tax plans hardly match his populist rhetoric. Though he sold his plan to rewrite the tax code as a boon to the average American worker in a speech Wednesday, he mostly focused on the taxes paid by America’s largest corporations.”

Washington Post's Plum Line: “Now, if Trump wants to make the case that huge high-end tax cuts will actually help workers, fine — let’s have that debate. But the point is that Trump is revealing once again that his populist economic nationalism — as he himself defined it — was largely a scam all along.”

Tax Policy Center’ Robertson Williams: “‘It doesn’t fit the model for a populist plan,’ said Roberton Williams, a Tax Policy Center economist. ‘The business cuts really help the rich, and the individual tax cuts somewhat help the rich, and overall the benefits disproportionately go to the top end.’”