Trump's new economic plan is terrible

We need coverage of what’s at stake in 2024

In a speech last Thursday, Joe Biden contrasted his economic vision with “MAGAnomics,” the budget plan of the Republican Study Committee that envisions huge cuts to Medicaid, large but unspecified cuts to non-military discretionary spending, and an increase in the Social Security retirement age to offset the cost of large regressive tax cuts.

I liked the effort to draw some attention to the concrete stakes of the upcoming election.

At the same time, Biden’s actual opponent is likely to be Donald Trump, who has disavowed at least the Social Security component of this plan. I would not particularly trust him on that — he violated campaign promises to protect Medicaid during his last presidency and might flip-flop on the Social Security issue if that’s what his allies in Congress want. But the stated centerpiece of his economic agenda is something different, weirder, and in some ways, worse: an enormous tax increase on middle- and working-class Americans in the form of an across-the-boar…