WASHINGTON, Sept. 5 (Xinhua ) -- The Trump administration's tax reform plan will do very little for the economic growth, said former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers on Tuesday.
U.S. president Donald Trump pushed Congress last week to pass a comprehensive measure to overhaul the tax code. The white House said it will release a final version the President's tax plan this month.
"This is an effort to cut taxes, principally to cut taxes on business in ways that will benefit a small part of the population and will do every little, in my judgment, for the economy," Summers, a Harvard professor of economics, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television.
White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn said last week that Congress, not the President, is taking the lead on crafting the actual tax reform legislation. Cohn, together with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, has been holding regular meetings in recent months with four Republican leaders in the House and Senate to work on the legislation.
Cohn told Fox Business Network last Friday that reforming the tax code is a "once-in-a-life opportunity," comparing the Trump administration's tax reform plan to the tax overhaul done by Reagan administration in 1986.
Summers, who led the Treasury during the Clinton administration, said Trump administration's tax plan bears little resemblance to the reform efforts of the 1980s. "The Tax Reform Act of 1986 was all reform, with no net cut. The current effort is mostly cuts, with very little structural reform," Summers wrote on his website on Tuesday.
It is not clear whether Congress has enough time to debate and pass the tax reform legislation by the end of this year, as lawmakers also have to pass legislation to fund the federal government and raise the debt ceiling in the coming months.
