After President Trump's devastating political defeat over Trump care and his vow not to return to health care in its wake, Trump allies say that he will move next on tax reform.

That was an open question, actually, since Trump has also talked in sterling terms about a huge infrastructure bill that would dump a trillion bucks into public works.

But given the Trump care political circular firing squad, will tax reform be any easier for Trump to ram

through Congress? Here are five things you need to know. First, deficit matters. One of the first

prominent Republican talking points during the Obama era was that Obama had blown out the deficit,

which, of course, he had. The national debt was $10.6 trillion when Obama took office. It was

almost $20 trillion when Obama left office. Tax reform, lowering the

tax rate, will increase the deficit in the short term, even if the supply side logic that economic

growth will increase tax revenues pays off in the long term. That means Republicans are going to

have to contend with a slew of headlines that they're blowing out spending, even if they're

just letting people keep their own money. And that's if they don't use budget reconciliation. If they do use the process known as budget reconciliation, they'll have to demonstrate that their plan won't increase the deficit over the next 10 years to only need 51 votes. And the projected savings from Trump care, one trillion bucks over 10 years supposedly, won't be available as an excuse to cut taxes since Trump care didn't pass. And since that estimate wasn't actually true. Tax reform advocate Grover Norquist says Trump care's failure

will only allow the top marginal tax rate to drop to 28% rather than 20% on this basis.

Second, Trump has sent mixed messages on taxes. During the campaign, Trump's tax plan was one of

the best among all Republican candidates.

He called for dramatic lowering of all of the top tax brackets. But in 2011, Trump said, quote,

I don't mind sacrificing for the country to be honest with you. Before he rolled out his campaign plan,

he talked openly about raising taxes on the highest income earners. He said, I would let people

who are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year

pay some tax. I don't mind paying a little more in taxes. In May 2016, he dumped on his own tax

plan after it came out. He told CNBC he wasn't a fan of tax breaks for high earners. He said,

quote, I am so much more into the middle class who've just been absolutely forgotten in our country.

He said that his original tax plan was merely a negotiation's starting point.

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