Richard Lattanzi, mayor of Clairton, Pa., and a safety inspector for a nearby U.S. Steel plant, poses for a portrait Tuesday. Credit: Michael Henninger, The Washington Post
Clairton, PA — When President Trump imposed tariffs on steel imports in June, Richard Lattanzi thought of dozens of his fellow steelworkers who have for years put off badly needed repairs of their cars and homes.
“There was a lot of excitement here; there were a lot of us saying, ‘It’s about time someone is looking out for us,’ ” said Lattanzi, the mayor of this town of 7,000 and a safety inspector at the U.S. Steel plant in nearby West Mifflin. “A lot of people around here were saying, ‘We’re going to be okay.’ ”
Four months later, Lattanzi is less optimistic. Production at U.S. Steel’s facilities have ramped up, and the company announced this summer that, thanks in part to the tariffs, its profits will surge. But in interviews in recent weeks, Lattanzi and other steelworkers said they’re no longer confident they’ll take part in the tariff bounty.
Republicans left middle-class families behind with a tax scam aimed at making the rich richer.
Credit: Greg Nash
Mountains of evidence continue to expose the the Republican tax scam as terrible deal for working-class families but a boon for rich corporations.
Case in point: Some 99 percent of companies said the tax scam was not prompting them to increase minimum wages for employees, according to Aon, a human resources consulting firm.
Aon’s survey of 1,000 companies was reported by the Wall Street Journal, and is consistent with other surveys of how companies are using the massive giveaway orchestrated by Trump and Republicans in Congress.
Later this week, the House of Representatives will vote on a second round of tax cuts once again favoring the rich. This new tax plan is a sequel to the tax law that the Republican-led Congress enacted in December, which is informally known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). The TCJA was badly skewed to wealthy Americans, exacerbating the decades-long trend toward greater inequality of income and wealth. The law created new loopholes for well-heeled taxpayers to exploit. Moreover, its massive cost was financed by higher budget deficits that will put even more pressure on vital programs that serve all Americans. The newly proposed tax plan shares each of these failings. Congress should reject it. Instead, federal lawmakers should work toward real tax reform, beginning with undoing the damage caused by the TCJA.
Tax Scam 2 is just more of the same
During the week of September 24, Republican leaders plan to bring up a package of three bills that they call “Tax Reform 2.0”—that critics rightly call Tax Scam 2—for a vote in the House. The centerpiece of this package is H.R. 6760, a bill to permanently extend the individual and estate tax provisions of the TCJA beyond their scheduled expiration at the end of 2025. The reason these provisions were made temporary was that congressional leaders chose to move the TCJA through Congress using the process known as budget reconciliation, which enables bills to pass the Senate with a simple majority but only if they are not estimated to increase deficits over the long term. Under these procedural constraints, the TCJA’s authors chose to make the legislation’s corporate tax provisions permanent and its individual and estate tax provisions temporary (with some exceptions). H.R. 6760 would permanently extend both the provisions of the TCJA that cut individual taxes, including the reductions in individual tax rates and higher standard deduction, and the TCJA’s tax increasing provisions, including the elimination of personal exemptions and the cap on the deduction for state and local taxes (the SALT deduction).
The House Ways and Means Committee reported H.R. 6760 along straight party lines on September 13. The bill has been scored by the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) to increase deficits by $631 billion over 10 years. As discussed below, the cost over a longer time horizon would be much greater.
An internal RNC poll shows voters know the GOP tax scam overwhelmingly benefits the rich — not middle-class families.
Mitch McConnell, R-KY., 2018. Credit: J. Scott Applewhite, AP
The Republican tax scam was always set up to favor wealthy corporations at the expense of middle-class families. And now Republicans are learning most voters see through their spin and understand the tax scam for exactly what it is.
Bloomberg obtained a private, internal poll from the Republican National Committee (RNC) showing “By a 2-to-1 margin — 61 percent to 30 percent — respondents said the law benefits ‘large corporations and rich Americans’ over ‘middle class families.’”
In response to the data, the pollsters wrote “we’ve lost the messaging battle on the issue.”
Voters know that Republicans don’t have their backs on health care or tax cuts. While Republicans only want to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, Democrats are fighting to increase access and affordability of care. The Trump tax law has not raisd workers’ wages as Republicans promised, but Democratic-led efforts to raise the minimum wage have increased wages for workers in states across the country.
Voters have switched parties for the midterm elections because they know that Democrats will fight for them on health care.
The Trump tax law has not helped working Americans. Now, Republicans plan to double down on more tax cuts for the rich with a vote this week on the Trump tax 2.0. It’s clear where Republicans’ priorities lie, and voters will hold them accountable in November.
A majority of Americans have not seen their paychecks increase from the Trump tax law.
6 in 10 voters say they aren’t seeing any additional money in their paychecks since the Trump tax law.
Now, Republicans want to double down on more tax cuts for the rich with the Trump tax 2.0.
Steve Rattner: “Let’s Look At After Inflation. What You’ll See There Is A Different Picture. What You See There, In Fact, Wages Have Been Rising More Slowly Under Trump Than Under And That Is In Part Because Of Inflation.” STEVE RATTNER: “Well, like most things it is not completely factually correct. Let’s look at a couple of chart. First, let’s look at the chart of what’s happened to nominal wages which is wages before you adjust for inflation what you can see here is what the president is talking about, which is this little jiggle up these last couple of years if you look at it in historical context it’s a small jiggle. That’s before inflation. Let’s look at after inflation. What you’ll see there is a different picture. What you see there, in fact, wages have been rising more slowly under trump than under and that is in part because of inflation. So under trump wages have only gone up, they were flat in June, flat in July they were flat, up a little bit in August but all told only up .3% a year under trump as opposed to Obama it’s a worse situation than it was under Obama.” [Morning Joe, MSNBC, 9/24/18; VIDEO]
Steve Rattner: “It Has Left The Middle Class, Many Who Voted For Trump, Worse Off Or Not Better Off Than Before.” STEVE RATTNER: “Then let’s look at a couple of other interesting things first some new data that came out about what’s happened to different strata of our society. Not surprisingly the top 10% of Americans have actually done pretty well. You see that the 50th percentile, the median here you see the top has done pretty well you see interestingly enough the bottom has done pretty well. What you also see the middle has not done very well the top we know why that’s happened the bottom has happened because of substantial increases in minimum wages by quite a number of states. It has left the middle class, many who voted for trump worse off or not better off than before.” [Morning Joe, MSNBC, 9/24/18; VIDEO]
President Donald Trump is applauded by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) Credit: Joshua Roberts, Reuters
The first of two official government reports that will be released this month showing that the federal budget deficit is soaring was issued on Monday when the Congressional Budget Office published it’s Monthly Budget Review for August.
According to CBO, the deficit through the first 11 months of fiscal 2018 was $895 billion, a $222 billion (32.8%) increase over the same period in 2017.
Some of the increase was the result of timing shifts, that is, spending that was made at the end of August because the first two days of September were on weekend. The deficit for the 11-month period would have been only $154 billion larger than 2017 had it not been for that.
View the complete September 13 post by Stan Collender on the DCReport.org website here.
The current congressional majority has made its priorities painfully clear. In 2017, the legislative calendar was dominated by an attempt to strip health care from millions of people in order to provide significant tax cuts to the wealthy. When that failed, Congress turned to a tax bill known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA), which was essentially a corrupt giveaway that provided massive windfalls to wealthy donors, special interests, and members of Congress themselves. The law will provide more than $84.7 billion in tax cuts to the top 1 percent of Americans in 2019, while increasing health insurance premiums for millions of people and resulting in nearly 9 million fewer people with coverage.
Many of the staffers who were most involved in the TCJA’s passage have left the Hillfor lucrative jobs as lobbyists for the special interests to whom they provided special tax breaks. Rep. Pat Tiberi (R-OH), who helped draft the TCJA, left shortly after its passage to become the head of the Ohio Business Roundtable—many of whose members benefited substantially from the bill.
Perhaps the most ostentatious example of this corruption came from Florida Rep. Vern Buchanan (R). Rep. Buchanan sits on the House committee that was charged with drafting the TCJA—a bill that gave him millions of dollars in special tax breaks. On the same day that he voted to pass the bill, Rep. Buchanan purchased a brand new 73-foot yacht with a base price of nearly $3 million.
