SPRINGFIELD, Mo.—President Donald Trump called on Congress to approve a steep cut in corporate tax rates and simplify the U.S. tax system, urging bipartisan support for a tax plan congressional Republicans are sketching out.

Mr. Trump’s remarks were a broad-brush opening pitch for the major tax bill that Republicans aim to pass ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.

Republicans have support from U.S. corporations and a desire to rack up a major legislative victory, but they have little backing from Democrats and must grapple with the competing factions and interest groups that have bedeviled previous tax proposals.

Mr. Trump, a Republican, said he wants to lower business-tax rates to 15% and make it easier for companies to repatriate foreign profits, saying the moves will boost the middle class. But he offered few other details in a 35-minute speech that laid out general principles and flaws in the current system.

The president outlined broad goals to make tax filing easier and lower tax rates on corporations and individuals. He also said he wants to eliminate loopholes that benefit the wealthiest in the nation, though he hasn’t offered many specifics beyond repealing the deduction for state and local taxes.


“If we want to renew our prosperity and to restore opportunity then we must reduce the tax burden on our companies and our workers,” Mr. Trump said.

The president said he picked the Midwestern town for the speech because of its proximity to historic Route 66, a symbol of American middle-class prosperity and culture.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, right, and Gary Cohn, director of the U.S. National Economic Council, have been involved in meetings with Republican lawmakers over a tax overhaul. Photo: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News

He called on Congress to put aside partisan politics and unite behind a goal of “letting Americans keep more of what they earn. The president also took aim at U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat seeking re-election next year in a state Mr. Trump won easily last year.

“If she doesn’t do it for you, you have to vote her out of office,” he said, referring to passage of a tax overhaul. “She’s got to make that commitment.”


Ms. McCaskill said in statement last weekend that she supports lowering the 35% corporate tax rate and that she was optimistic about finding common ground with Mr. Trump.

The president also nodded to Congress’s central role in getting tax changes passed after Republican lawmakers’ failure to get a health-care overhaul passed.

“I don’t want to be disappointed by Congress, do you understand?” Mr. Trump said to loud applause from workers at the Loren Cook Co., a Springfield, Mo. business that makes industrial fans and blowers.

Mr. Trump called for the tax plan to be bipartisan and some of the core principles he laid out would appeal to Democrats, including simplification, assistance for middle-class families and economic growth.


“The best way to help the American worker is if they have more of their hard-earned dollars and if they can spend that money instead of Washington, D.C.,” said Rep. Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican on the Ways and Means Committee who attended Wednesday’s speech.

Although the president has called for doubling the standard deduction, the administration’s vagueness on other tax provisions important to middle-income households makes it hard to calculate how a typical family would benefit; he didn’t offer any such details on Wednesday.

Indeed, Mr. Trump’s plans to lower business taxes significantly, lower individual tax rates for high-income households and repeal the estate tax have found little support among Democrats. Some Democrats called his speech deceptive and vague.

“Tax reform should not increase the tax burden on the middle class and there should not be any tax cut for the wealthiest 1% of Americans, period. Not one penny of tax cuts,” for the top 1%, Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the chamber’s Democratic leader, said Wednesday. “It’s middle-class Americans, not those in the 1%, that deserve tax relief.”


The tax bill will be easier for Congress than health care because there is a chance of bipartisanship, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), predicted during a stop in Le Mars, Iowa. Getting a bill passed, however, is crucial to Republicans’ political fortunes.

“We’ve promised three things: health-care reform, tax reform and infrastructure. And we haven’t delivered on any of them. We’ve got to start delivering if we expect to still be a majority,” Mr. Grassley said.

Independent analyses of prior GOP-backed tax plans show the biggest benefits going to high-income households. The Treasury Department and the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimate that workers do pay some corporate taxes in the form of depressed wages, but that the bulk of the cost is borne by owners of capital, who tend to be wealthier.

Republicans are still working on the tax legislation and they have a long list of obstacles to overcome. They haven’t settled on which tax breaks would go away, or whether they want a net tax cut, or how much revenue the new tax code would raise. Mr. Trump’s goal of a 15% corporate tax rate will be hard to achieve, limited in part by congressional rules that prevent lawmakers from adding to long-run deficits on bills that pass the Senate with a simple majority vote.

The White House had planned earlier this year to offer more details about taxes after letting Congress control the process on health care. But the White House has been hearing from congressional leaders who have said that rank-and-file members felt “health care was negotiated without them” and want more say in the tax proposal that is ultimately put forward, a senior administration official said.

President Trump flies to Springfield, Mo., this week after what has been a tumultuous August in the White House to begin making a push for his tax-overhaul plan and a tax cut embedded in that plan. The WSJ's Gerald F. Seib explains the complicated path ahead.

In deference to that sentiment, the White House has decided not to “get out in front of them with details,” the official said. “We’re just acquiescing to that request.”

Congress returns next week from its August recess, and over the next few weeks, Ways and Means Republicans who have been talking about tax policy for years will start making decisions and then attempt to get the bill passed, said Rep. Peter Roskam of Illinois, a senior committee member.

“There’s no way you’re going to do that without the direct involvement of the president of the United States,” said Mr. Roskam, a Republican, in an interview Wednesday. “It’s helpful if the president uses the office for that focal point over an extended period of time.”

—Peter Nicholas

and Kristina Peterson and Byron Tau contributed to this article.

Write to Michael C. Bender at Mike.Bender@wsj.com and Richard Rubin at richard.rubin@wsj.com