White House Economic Adviser: Trump Should Declare a “National Economic Emergency”

A White House economic adviser has called on Donald Trump to declare a national emergency because of the Coronavirus and stop collecting payroll taxes.

Stephen Moore co-authored an op-ed in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal calling for radical and apparently unilateral action to shore up the struggling U.S. economy.

“Last week Mr. Trump acknowledged that compromising with Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a fool’s errand, because the House won’t agree to anything that boosts growth and job creation,” Moore wrote.

Moore claimed the Democrats’ economic plan would “sink the economy and imperil Mr. Trump’s reelection.”

To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.

“The president needs to pull an end run, and there’s a legal way to do that. He should declare a national economic emergency and announce that the Internal Revenue Service will immediately stop collecting the payroll tax,” Moore said.

“This is technically called a deferral of the tax payments.”

He said that while Democrats couldn’t call for a tax cut for the rich, President Trump can and should.

“Mr. Trump could cap it at, say, $75,000 of income, so the vast majority of the benefit would go to straight into the wallets of middle- and lower-income workers, almost all of whom pay more payroll than income tax,” he wrote.

Moore has been widely criticized for his approach to economics, with economists blasting his ideas as “terrible“. Nonetheless, he may hold sway over a president facing a tough reelection fight.

Follow Darragh Roche on Twitter

Darragh Roche

Darragh Roche is a journalist covering U.S. politics and media