Story highlights Edward McCaffery: Trump boasts his tax plan would double the standard deduction, but it would hurt many Americans

Among those hit the hardest would be single parents, large families and those working in blue states, he writes

Edward J. McCaffery is Robert C. Packard trustee chair in law and a professor of law, economics and political science at the University of Southern California. He is the author of "Fair Not Flat: How to Make the Tax System Better and Simpler." The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.

(CNN) Fresh from yet another failure to repeal-and-not-quite-replace Obamacare, President Trump and fellow Republicans are attempting to pull another trick out of their traditional playbook: "massive" tax cuts, mainly helping the rich.

The "Unified Framework" released Wednesday is, like most things Republican of late, more of a sketch than a plan. But it is a telling sketch, both in what it includes and in what it doesn't.

There is deep irony in how things are playing out. The Republicans faithfully claim to be learning the lesson of the failed Obamacare repeal effort, but stripped to its essence, what is the lesson? It is a simple one that Trump himself ought to know full well: People hate to lose.

Edward J. McCaffery

Trumpcare would have been a major loss for tens of millions of Americans, which was exactly its point. The quest to kill entitlement programs has become a holy grail of the right, Obamacare becoming the Moby Dick turning Paul Ryan and his merry band of conservatives into a gang of raging Ahabs.

Of course, entitlement losers make for tax cut winners . The trouble is, the losers from Trumpcare and the winners from Trump tax would not have been the same people.

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