No Wonder Everyone’s Rallying Around This Terrible Idea

Ms. Sarin, a contributing Opinion writer, is a professor at Yale Law School and the president of the Budget Lab at Yale.

In a nation seemingly unable to agree on anything, people appear to be converging on one idea: Taxes are bad. In addition to the calls for broad-based middle-class tax cuts, we’re seeing proposed exemptions for teachers, law enforcement officials and boat owners. Call it the Oprah tax code: Tipped workers, YOU get a tax break! Teachers, YOU get a tax break! Overtime workers, YOU get a tax break! These suggestions aren’t coming just from Republicans, the longtime proponents of small government and no-new-tax pledges. Today these ideas are attracting people across the political........

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