We thought at first that it must be an April Fool’s joke until we saw the date the story was posted. On April 3, Bloomberg reported that Republicans “are weighing the creation of a new bracket for those earning $1 million or more to offset some of the costs of their tax bill.”

Earlier in the year, Politico reported that members of the House Freedom Caucus were considering boosting the corporate tax rate to 25% to “pay for” a doubling of the cap on state and local tax deductions.

As our friend Steve Moore put it: “I mean, Republicans, are they crazy?”

“Crazy” is putting it mildly.

Let’s review why Republicans need their heads examined for this sort of talk.

First and foremost, it plays into the left’s big lie that the rich don’t pay their fair share of taxes. Take a look at the chart below, courtesy of economist Mark Perry. It shows the share of federal taxes paid by the top 1% of income earners compared with the share paid by the bottom 95%.

Notice anything? The trend has been steadily upward, with the richest Americans picking up an ever larger share of the income tax burden. Now, you could say that, well, the rich have gotten richer. But that doesn’t explain it. As Perry notes, the top 1% earned just over 26% of all income but paid more than 40% of all income taxes in 2022. And that’s after decades of supposed “tax cuts for the rich.”

Adding insult to injury, a tax hike targeting millionaires will raise far less money than promised because the rich will find ways to avoid paying those higher taxes. And it will only whet the appetite of Democrats for more soak-the-rich taxes.

Other reports say some in the GOP are considering boosting the corporate tax rate to 25%. Which is just as dumb, since companies are paying more in corporate taxes after Trump slashed the rate from a high of 39% down to 21%,

In fact, the entire package of Trump tax cuts paid for itself.

That’s right. When all is said and done, federal tax revenues are higher today than they would have been without the Trump tax cuts.

Before Trump signed his tax cuts into law, the Congressional Budget Office issued its revenue forecast for the next decade. Without any Trump tax cuts, it said the federal government would bring in $40.7 trillion.

After the 2017 tax cuts passed, the CBO cut its forecast to $39.6 trillion.

But by 2022, it admitted that it was woefully wrong. Actual revenues will turn out to be around $41.3 trillion, the CBO said.

The reason: the economy grew faster than it would have otherwise.

This is exactly what “supply side” economists predicted would happen.

And what do these same economists say will happen if you raise taxes? You will get less revenue than you hope. Either because the rich can find ways to avoid the bigger tax hit, or because companies will be less productive, or both. In any case, it will cut economic growth.

The rich won’t suffer. But working-class families will.

There’s one more reason talk of raising taxes to “pay for” other tax cuts is lunacy for Republicans: It undercuts Trump’s central message: that we should be taxing imports more and Americans less.

As we said, calling this “crazy” doesn’t go far enough. It’s more like schizophrenia with a touch of early-onset dementia.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board