Donald Trump makes concessions to Democrats as he scrambles to turn tax campaign promise into law

Donald Trump is expected to include child care welfare credits in his tax reform plans to win support from Democrats as he scrambles to turn his campaign pledge into law.

The president enjoys a Republican majority in Congress, but after failing to overhaul America's healthcare system, he is now under pressure to make secure at least one major piece of legislation ahead of marking his first 100 days in office on Saturday. 

Mr Trump will on Wednesday unveil a plan that he has said will include "maybe the biggest tax cut" America has "ever had". 

It is expected to reflect his pledge to slash the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 per cent. He has also promised to significantly reduce the top individual tax rate. 

Mr Trump is said to be pushing for the policy even at a cost of jettisoning his promise to shrink the size of the country's budget deficit. 

The Tax Policy Centre, a liberal-leaning research group, has concluded that this new tax law this would add at least $7 trillion in government debt over a decade. Reducing the corporate tax rate alone as much as Trump intends would cause a $2 trillion budget shortfall over a decade, according to guidelines from the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

Supporting a policy that comes at such a massive cost could damage the credibility of many Republican members of Congress who have spent years railing against the rising national debt under former President Barack Obama.

So Mr Trump is turning to Democrats, including provisions that appeal to the political left in the hopes of shoring up the votes he needs. 

On Tuesday the news site Politico, reported that the plan is expected to include a child care tax credit developed by Ivanka Trump, the President's daughter and unpaid adviser. 

It will likely also increase spending on infrastructure.

The idea will draw from a bipartisan proposal made by Chuck Schumer, the Democratic minority leader from New York and Rob Portman, a senator from Ohio in the summer of 2015. It called for using tax revenue from businesses bringing foreign earnings back into the United States to fix the country's, increasingly crumbling, infrastructure.

Democrats have often complained of being shut out of tax talks with their Republican counterparts. Aides on the Senate Finance Committee have said they were not included in a briefing by president's economic team on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

If Mr Trump were able to develop a plan that did not expand the budget deficit it should enable him to push through bill with only Republican support in the Senate through a procedure that requires only 51 votes.

These new concessions may be an indication that the White House recognises this is unlikely to occur.

 Steven Mnuchin, Mr Trump’s treasury secretary, has previously said that the tax cuts will pay for themselves through the economic growth they will generate. 

The concept, to engineer up to 3 per cent economic growth - a dramatic increase from the 1.6 per cent achieved last year - was popularized as "trickle-down" economics during the Reagan years. 

But modern day economists have scoffed at the proposal, and said the economy can't grow quickly enough to cover the likely hole in the deficit.

"There's no pure tax cut that pays for itself," said Alan Cole, an economist at the right-leaning Tax Foundation.

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