President Donald Trump has spent weeks behind the scenes focused on getting the lowest tax rates possible for America’s largest corporations – even as he’s now committed to selling his nascent tax reform effort as a win for the American middle class.

Trump will kick off this sales pitch in earnest on Wednesday at an Indiana rally, shortly after the “Big Six” tax negotiators – a group comprised of top administration officials, Hill Republican leaders, and the heads of the key congressional tax-writing committees – unveil their latest tax blueprint ahead of a House Republican retreat, according to six sources familiar with the tax negotiations.


That proposal is not expected to go into specifics on outstanding questions such as which deductions or credits lawmakers would cut to pay for lower rates – one of the most controversial aspects of tweaking the tax code.

The White House’s chief challenge is to convince American voters that slashing the corporate tax rate can personally benefit workers in Rust Belt and industrial states, which Trump largely won in the 2016 campaign.

Behind closed doors, the president has repeatedly insisted on a target corporate rate of 15 percent – despite the protestations of some administration officials and congressional lawmakers like House Speaker Paul Ryan, who publicly have argued it is not possible. On Sunday, he again said he hoped the corporate rate would end up at 15 percent.

“From the very first time I sat down with him to talk about taxes in the late winter or early spring of 2016, he was very focused on the business side of the tax code,” said Larry Kudlow, an informal economic adviser to the president. “That is where his heart is.”

In early speeches in Missouri and North Dakota, the president has argued that a raft of tax cuts for businesses and individuals will ultimately translate into higher wages, more jobs in the U.S., and greater economic growth – and the resurgence of the U.S. as a major economic engine. It’s an extension of the classic Republican ideology of supply side economics – except in Trump’s version, lower corporate taxes line up with the president’s nationalist brand.

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Recent polling by POLITICO/Morning Consult shows just how tough it may be to sell Americans on the idea of slashing corporate taxes. Six out of 10 respondents in an early September poll thought that corporations paid too little in taxes; respondents also indicated that cutting the corporate rate to 15 percent, as Trump would like, is far less popular than giving that same rate to small businesses.

Seventy-four percent of those surveyed supported middle class tax cuts.

Trump’s task is complicated by the fact that the administration would like the support of Democrats. That’s why he’s concentrating his roadshow on states with vulnerable Democratic senators up for re-election in 2018.

The White House hopes some of these Democrats may be convinced to support a Republican-led bill especially if the legislation preserves taxes on the wealthy – one of the ongoing debates. Both Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin have pledged recently that the tax rates will not go down for the wealthiest Americans in nod to the administration’s populist messaging except early leaks of the Big Six blueprint show the top individual rate dropping to 35 percent.

Even the relatively esoteric idea of bringing companies’ overseas profits back to the U.S., known as “repatriation,” is being cast by the White House as a win for the middle-class and potential area for bipartisanship. “If you are a firefighter or union worker with a pension plan, just look at the last time the U.S. had repatriation. The S&P ticked up 6 percent almost immediately. That has a direct impact on your pension. That is real money in people’s pockets,” said one White House official.

In the coming weeks, the Big Six group plans to hand off the details of the tax legislation to the congressional tax-writing committees. The House Ways & Means Committee held closed-door meetings on Sunday night and will meet again Monday to go over the range of the policy options for any tax bill.

Among the ideas that the Big Six has coalesced on: Eliminating the deduction for state and local taxes. The negotiators also want to move to a territorial tax system and give companies a one-time chance to bring their dollars back to the U.S. at a lower tax rate.

There is also general agreement that the corporate tax rate should hover around 20 percent, with the understanding that in any package Congress produces “tax rates are king” and the most important part, said a different source familiar with the negotiations.

One source who has attended small tax meetings with the president said Trump saw a low corporate rate as the “signature” part of any tax legislation.

For tax experts, the question is how far the new Big Six blueprint will go on policy details beyond the tax negotiators’ earlier statements.

“Most of the stuff they are going to release, frankly, has already been out there,” said one Republican lobbyist close to the administration.

The White House press office did not respond to requests for comment on policy details of the plan.

The White House appears to be taking political cues from the 1986 tax reform in which President Ronald Reagan pitched broad strokes to voters while leaving many of the details to the Treasury Department and bipartisan lawmakers. Trump invoked the specter of Reagan in his recent tax reform speech in North Dakota.

“Ronald Reagan proved that cutting taxes on American businesses helps American workers win in the world marketplace,” Trump said at the Sept. 6 event. ”When President Reagan lowered taxes, American businesses beat out our foreign competition. Our economy boomed, the middle class thrived, and median family income increased.”

Following the president’s Indiana speech on Wednesday, the White House said it intends to devote significant resources to the tax reform push. A number of Cabinet secretaries including Mnuchin; Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon; and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney will fan across the country to do events and speeches.

“This is a big week for getting the momentum rolling,” said the White House official. “The purpose of the Big Six process is to set up a framework and principles. I think the level of details that come out this week will be exactly appropriate for the process.”

Throughout Washington D.C. in recent days, the rumor mill has churned with potential details of the Big Six blueprint.

One source close to the negotiations said that the Big Six proposal would only be as detailed as it needed to be to push House lawmakers to pass a budget resolution, which will contain instructions for the parameters for tax reform. Some conservative House lawmakers have demanded to know more details of the tax legislations before agreeing to pass the budget.

Already, Senate budget leaders have tentatively agreed to a deal that gives lawmakers the leeway to pass a $1.5 trillion tax cut.

That Senate handshake deal, combined with the president’s ramped up salesmanship, has given some businesses, lobbyists, and wonks a sense of optimism – which is exactly what the White House wants for this key legislative priority following its failure to repeal Obamacare.

Like health care, the White House seems to be leaving most of the policy details up to Congress to develop – with the president out ahead on the messaging.

“This process needed some energy. People have been hearing about this forever and were like, ‘Just give me something!” said a former Treasury official who applauded the president’s salesmanship. “People are hungry for a reason to take this seriously, and now they are arguing whether it gets done this year or next year.”

Conservative groups are also waiting for concrete proposals. “You’ve got this big debate on tax reform: Will the tax cuts be permanent or temporary? Will they add to the deficit, or do you not care? You need to knock down those dominos to know what tax reform starts to look like,” said Adam Brandon, president of the conservative activist group FreedomWorks. “We need to start to finish up these debates.”