ACA Repeal’s Tax Cut to the Very Top Colliding with “Mnuchin Test”

Republican plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which will deliver billions in tax cuts to the nation’s highest-income households, won’t meet the test outlined by President-elect Trump’s Treasury nominee, Steven Mnuchin — that we won’t see an “absolute tax cut for the upper class.”

Mr. Mnuchin’s test is an appropriate topic for his nomination hearing, expected to occur next Thursday — especially because the 400 highest-income households could get an annual average tax cut of about $7 million under Republicans’ plans to repeal the ACA, if two Medicare taxes that fall only on high-income filers are eliminated. Millionaire households would get tax cuts of about $50,000 apiece.

That sets the ACA repeal on a collision course with Mnuchin’s standard, as CNBC’s John Harwood describes in the must-watch clip below.