WASHINGTON ��Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin pushed back Sunday against assessments that the majority of the Trump administration's planned tax benefits would go to the wealthy.
"It is our objective that the entire middle class does get a tax cut," Mnuchin said on ABC's "This Week."
Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump's budget director, White House economic adviser Gary Cohn and House Speaker Paul Ryan also defended the tax plan.
Mnuchin said changes to the tax system being developed with congressional Republicans "are meant to create middle-income tax cuts and also to make corporate and business tax competitive so we can bring back tons and tons of jobs and capital to this country."
"We hope to get something on his desk and signed in December," Mnuchin said, referring to Trump.
The White House and Republican leaders Wednesday began an effort to get a major legislative win this year, announcing a tax plan that immediately set off a fight over how much top earners should pay.
A Washington policy group study released Friday estimated that many middle-income earners would pay more taxes under the proposal, while more than half the benefits provided by the plan's cuts would go to the top 1 percent of taxpayers.
Mnuchin said critics making estimates didn't yet have all the details of the plan.
He added that, with additional economic growth the administration expects to be created by the tax cuts, the plan would reduce the government's annual spending deficit by $1 trillion.
Mnuchin said the administration "fundamentally believes we can get back to a sustained 3 percent or higher" rate of growth.
Many economists have called the 3 percent growth target unreasonable. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said in July it would be "challenging" to reach that level of growth.
Mnuchin also responded to concerns that a new lower rate for so-called pass-through businesses would provide a huge loophole for wealthy Americans.
"As we change the pass-through rates, it's important that we have guard rails around those rules," he said. "This isn't about creating tax cuts for the rich."
Pass-through vehicles, often used by people who work as independent contractors, are companies that don't pay tax. Instead, their owners, after deducting business expenses, receive any leftover profits and pay at regular personal-income rates.
Under the new rules, pass-through companies would pay a maximum 25 percent tax on profits, much lower than the upper brackets in the Trump plan. That has provoked fears that many richer Americans will try to set up pass-through entities to reduce their tax exposure.
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(Ben Brody contributed to this report.)
