Tag: GOP supply side economics

Booming Economy May Be Little Felt as Voters Decide

The following articl by Ben Casselman and Jim Tankersley was posted on the New York Times website August 17, 2018:

Republicans are telling you that tax cuts and roaring economic growth are going to stop any “blue wave” in the midterm elections. Democrats say the lack of wage growth, even as corporate profits surge, will impel voters to change leadership in Congress.

It’s not that simple.

A new survey of nearly 10,000 American adults shows that the strong economy is rallying Republicans and maybe swaying some independents. But many voters still aren’t feeling the benefits of robust growth, and the tax overhaul passed last year looks as likely to hurt Republicans at the polls as help them.

View the complete article here.

‘Stuck in a belligerent doldrum’: Wages rise in the nation’s hottest job market — but so do costs

The following article by Todd C. Frankel was posted on the Washington Post website August 17, 2018:

Isabel Moctezuma works as a cook at Iowa State University during the school year and in the kitchen at Texas Roadhouse during the summer to support herself and her 8-year-old daughter, Mia. Credit: Rachel Mummey, The Washington Post

AMES, Iowa  — Isabel Moctezuma was cooking again. Now, at least, she was doing it at home, making salmon for dinner in her small apartment. Her daughter, Mia, 8, sliced carrots next to her. Moctezuma was just off the clock and still wearing her Texas Roadhouse work shirt, which on the back read, “I (heart) my job.” The slogan made her laugh.

Moctezuma, 39, worked this summer in the restaurant’s kitchen for $11.50 an hour — less than what she had made as a cook six years ago. The rest of the year she worked as a cook at Iowa State University, where the pay was a little better. But she had seen the “Help Wanted” signs all over town. She’d heard how the local economy was soaring. And she’d recently applied for a supervisor’s job. She wondered if this was her chance. It was only later, when dinner was over and with the dishes done and Mia watching TV, that she allowed herself to imagine what that might feel like.

“It would be nice to not have to worry so much,” she said.

View the complete post here.

No, Trump Voters, Your Wages Aren’t Going Up

The following article by David Cay Johnston was posted on the DCReport.org website August 15, 2018:

Unless You Were Already Making More than $1 Million a Year

We’ve got some disappointing news for all those people who voted for Donald Trump because he promised rising wages.

While Trump keeps saying wages are rising the official government data show that’s just not true.

Consider a worker paid the median wage, half make more and half less, of $600 a week in round numbers. If she got the average 2.8% raise on July 1, her gross pay rose by a bit under $17.

View the complete article here.

Public debt of the United States of America from July 2017 to July 2018, by month (in billion U.S. dollars)

The website Statista.com provides a month-by-month graph of the U.S. national debt.  Take a look at what has happened in the last year:

So much for Republican fiscal responsibility.  This is what has happened since they passed the Trump wealthcare bill.  As we move toward this November’s election, remember Rep. Erik Paulsen voted FOR the bill that caused this increase in debt.

Visit the site here.

In U.S., wage growth is being wiped out entirely by inflation

The following article by Heather Long was posted on the Washington Post website August 10, 2018:

Applicants chat with potential employers during a jobs fair at Minneapolis International Airport on July 17. Credit: David Zalubowsk, AP.

Rising prices have erased U.S. workers’ meager wage gains, the latest sign strong economic growth has not translated into greater prosperity for the middle and working classes.

Cost of living was up 2.9 percent from July 2017 to July 2018, the Labor Department reported Friday, an inflation rate that outstripped a 2.7 percent increase in wages over the same period. The average U.S. “real wage,” a federal measure of pay that takes inflation into account, fell to $10.76 an hour last month, 2 cents down from where it was a year ago.

The stagnation in pay defies U.S. growth, which has increased in the past year and topped 4 percent in the second quarter of 2018 — the highest rate since mid-2014.

View the complete post here.

Debt Piled On Your Children And Your Childrens’ Children

The following commentary by Stan Collender was posted on the DCReports.org website August, 2018:

Trump’s Deficits Will Cause Very Serious Challenges For Multiple Generations Of Americans

Trump displays his signature after signing the $1.5 trillion tax overhaul plan in the White House, Dec. 22, 2017.

The headline above is not partisan hyperbole or a rhetorical flourish: The $1 trillion-plus annual Trump budget deficits that are about to start will soon create huge policy challenges for future generations of Americans.

While presidents submit and Congress adopts one-year budgets (when they bother to do a budget at all, that is), the spending and taxing policies put in place in those budgets are more or less permanent.

This is certainly true with federal spending because most of it is “mandatory”‘ and will continue until Congress and the president change it. Given that most mandatory spending (Social Security, Medicare and many veterans benefits, for example) are growing in popularity, reductions aren’t likely any time soon…and maybe not at all.

View the complete article here.

NOTE:  Rep. Erik Paulsen voted for this tax bill.

Multi-Millionaire Steve Mnuchin Takes Care Of His Own

The following article by David Cay Johnston was posted on the DCReport.org website July 31, 2018:

Treasury Secretary Plans Another Tax Giveaway for the One Percent

The swamp monster who Donald Trump chose as Treasury secretary has a plan to save the richest of the rich billions and billions in taxes – and without any vote by Congress, either.

Steve Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachser and later California banker who grew rich exploiting the housing crisis, revealed the plan to The New York Times while in Argentina for the G-20 meeting of the world’s richest countries.

The plan would radically increase the concentration of wealth in America, accelerating a trend that will be explained below with some shocking numbers. And it comes as the Trump administration, reneging on campaign promises, is floating proposals to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security as well as using subtle means to scuttle the Affordable Care Act.

View the complete article here.

GOP’s tax scam gives millionaire CEOs a huge Trump Bump in pay

The following article by Oliver Willis was posted on the ShareBlue.com website July 30, 2018:

Ultra-rich CEOs are raking in even more millions of dollars, thanks to the GOP’s tax scam.

Credit: Evan Vucci, AP

The Republican tax scam, passed with only GOP votes and Trump’s signature, has led to a massive Trump Bump in pay for multi-millionaire CEOs while average Americans have been left out to dry.

In a review of SEC filings since the passage of the GOP tax scam, Politico found that executives “have been profiting handsomely by selling shares since Trump signed the law on Dec. 22 and slashed corporate tax rates to 21 percent.”

Further, according to Politico, public companies have announced $600 billion in buybacks this year alone, and approximately 28 percent of S&P 500 companies have announced plans to offer buybacks to shareholders.

View the complete article here.

Trump Administration Mulls a Unilateral Tax Cut for the Rich Image

The following article by Alan Rappeport and Jim Tankersley was posted on the New York Timeswebsite July 30, 2018:

Credit: Doug Mills The New York Times

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering bypassing Congress to grant a $100 billion tax cut mainly to the wealthy, a legally tenuous maneuver that would cut capital gains taxation and fulfill a long-held ambition of many investors and conservatives.

Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, said in an interview on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit meeting in Argentina this month that his department was studying whether it could use its regulatory powers to allow Americans to account for inflation in determining capital gains tax liabilities. The Treasury Department could change the definition of “cost” for calculating capital gains, allowing taxpayers to adjust the initial value of an asset, such as a home or a share of stock, for inflation when it sells.

“If it can’t get done through a legislation process, we will look at what tools at Treasury we have to do it on our own and we’ll consider that,” Mr. Mnuchin said, emphasizing that he had not concluded whether the Treasury Department had the authority to act alone. “We are studying that internally, and we are also studying the economic costs and the impact on growth.”

View the complete article here.

Republicans Are Doubling Down on Their Failed Tax Cuts

The following article by Leo Gerard of the Independent Media Institute was posted on the AlterNet website July 27, 2018:

Credit: USGovernmentDebt.us

Up is down. Would is wouldn’t. “What you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening.” And a new round of GOP tax cuts, proposed this week, definitely will not result in damage to Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security!

Definitely.

Republicans live in an Alice-in-Wonderland World where they can pass $1.5 trillion in tax cuts that won’t cost anything. They’ll pay for themselves! Just like a worker’s mortgage does every month. Just pays for itself! And then the GOP can propose another $1 trillion in tax cuts that also won’t cost anything! They certainly won’t increase the federal deficit!

View the complete article here.