Tag: GOP supply side economics

Minnesotans raise alarms about tax bill

The following article was posted on the Workday Minnesota website November 26, 2017:

Recently, retired union members and friends brought their concerns about tax fairness and threats to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security to Republican Congressman Erik Paulsen’s office. Photo courtesy of Minneapolis Regional Retiree Council

EDEN PRAIRIE — Union members in Minnesota are among those raising objections as the U.S. Senate prepares to vote on legislation to cut taxes, threatening important public services and providing handouts to the wealthy.

A vote could take place in the Senate as soon as Nov. 30, according to several media sources. The House has already passed its own bill.

Recently, retired union members and friends brought their concerns about tax fairness and threats to Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security to Republican Congressman Erik Paulsen’s office. In an action organized by the Minneapolis Regional Retiree Council, a small group of Paulsen’s constituents delivered a letter to his office in Eden Prairie, while over 60 other people bannered at the street corner outside. Continue reading “Minnesotans raise alarms about tax bill”

Ivanka Trump Should Stop Pretending the Tax Bill Will Help Women and Families

The following article by Shilpa Phadke was posted on the Center for American Progress website November 27, 2017:

Ivanka Trump walks across the stage during a town hall meeting on tax policy in Richboro, Pennsylvania, October 23, 2017. Credit: AP/Rich Schultz

U.S. House Republicans recently jammed through a tax bill, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, that gives massive tax cuts to millionaires and the ultrarich instead of those who need it the most: working families. Ivanka Trump, who has been traveling around the country advocating for the bill, claimed in Pennsylvania, “This tax plan couples two things that are really core values as a country, which is work and supporting the American family.” But, her tax pitch does not tell the full story of the bill, namely that nearly 87 million working- and middle-class households would see a tax hike in 2027. And the massive deficit increases from the bill will likely be used by conservatives to justify cutting government programs that support families. Far from supporting working families, these consequences would be devastating to millions and hurt the U.S. economy. Ivanka Trump should be straight about how much people such as her and her family stand to benefit from the tax bills and how those benefits are at the expense of the very women and families she claims to be fighting for.

Here are the top reasons that the tax bills are bad for women and families: Continue reading “Ivanka Trump Should Stop Pretending the Tax Bill Will Help Women and Families”

The Republican Tax Plan Is a Tax on Disability

The following article by Rebecca Vallas, Rebecca Cokley and Eliza Schultz was posted on the Center for American Progress website November 27, 2017:

President Donald Trump walks with House Speaker Paul Ryan, November 2017. Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

Throughout 2017, President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have continually taken aim at the health, well-being, and independence of Americans with disabilities. From repeated attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and end Medicaid as we know it to budget proposals that slash Social Security disability benefits, disability employment services, Meals on Wheels, and more, the agenda Trump and his colleagues in Congress are pursuing would be nothing short of a disaster for people with disabilities. The latest attack comes in the form of their partisan tax plan, which passed the House on November 16 and is set to be voted on in the Senate as soon as this week.

Although they have sold the plan as a Christmas present for the middle class, under the Senate bill, a staggering 87 million* middle- and working-class families would see their taxes rise by 2027. Meanwhile, the top 0.1 percent would receive an average tax cut of $208,060. Furthermore, by repealing the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) individual mandate, the tax plan would also undermine the individual insurance market, driving up premiums and leaving 13 million more Americans without health insurance by 2025. Continue reading “The Republican Tax Plan Is a Tax on Disability”

An Old Saw’s New Twist: Death (of the Deficit Hawks) and Taxes

The following article by David Hawkings was posted on the Roll Call website November 27, 2017:

A few Republicans clinging to old party orthodoxy could doom Trump’s big win

Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney has said “a lot of this is a gimmick,” referring to the tax bill’s expiration dates for some of the lower rates. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo)

This apparent contradiction confronts Congress as it returns for a grueling month of legislating: The Republicans who run the Capitol, so many of whom came to Washington as avatars of fiscal responsibility, are going to spend the rest of the year working to make a worsening federal balance sheet look even worse.

December holds the potential for a productivity breakthrough, but it also threatens to end in embarrassing deadlock — which is why the clear consensus within the upper reaches of the congressional GOP is that it’s the right time to get comfortable with any feelings of hypocritical guilt.

The party’s acute political need to be seen as starting to make something with their unified government before the dawn of the midterm campaign season, the leadership and President Donald Trump have made plain, will need to take precedence over the demands of the relatively few remaining deficit hawks trying to push the party back toward its traditional core values of balancing budgets and holding the line on borrowing. Continue reading “An Old Saw’s New Twist: Death (of the Deficit Hawks) and Taxes”

For Trump, GOP tax bill could have big downside

The following article by Melanie Zanona was posted on the Hill website November 26, 2017:

© Getty Images

The GOP tax plan that is speeding through Congress could deliver a much-needed win for the White House, but it could also kill one of Trump’s other top priorities: legislation to rebuild U.S. infrastructure.

Not only would the tax overhaul use up one of the potential funding options for repairing infrastructure, it would also eliminate a financing tool that states have used to back a wide range of infrastructure projects.

That could spell doom for Trump’s infrastructure overhaul, which was always going to be a tough sell for fiscal conservatives on Capitol Hill. Continue reading “For Trump, GOP tax bill could have big downside”

Senate GOP tax bill hurts the poor more than originally thought, CBO finds

The following article by Heather Long was posted on the Washington Post website November 26, 2017:

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) had a tense exchange during a markup of the GOP tax bill on Nov. 16. (Senate Finance Committee)

The Senate Republican tax plan gives substantial tax cuts and benefits to Americans earning more than $100,000 a year, while the nation’s poorest would be worse off, according to a reportreleased Sunday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Republicans are aiming to have the full Senate vote on the tax plan as early as this week, but the new CBO analysis showing large, harmful effects on the poor may complicate those plans. The CBO also said the bill would add $1.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, a potential problem for Republican lawmakers worried about America’s growing debt. Continue reading “Senate GOP tax bill hurts the poor more than originally thought, CBO finds”

GOP leaders in advanced talks to change tax plan in bid to win over holdouts

The following article by Damian Paletta was posted on the Washington Post website November 26, 2017:

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is surrounded by reporters as he goes to vote on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Susan Walsh/AP)

Senate Republicans are seriously considering several last-minute changes to their tax legislation in an effort to mollify wavering members, four people familiar with the discussions said, as GOP leaders seek to keep their members from defecting ahead of crucial votes this week.

The lawmakers attracting the most concern from leadership and the White House are Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who say the current version of the bill favors corporations over other businesses.

There are numerous members demanding changes, and their desires don’t all overlap. Together, the requests put Republican leaders in a difficult position, as they attempt to accommodate individual holdouts on a one-off basis without losing other members or creating a situation in which the bill collapses under the weight of disparate demands. Continue reading “GOP leaders in advanced talks to change tax plan in bid to win over holdouts”

To Regain Its Sanity, the Republican Party Must Give Up Voodoo Economics

The following article by Charles P. Pierce was posted on the Esquire website October 17, 2017:

This crazy might be the deepest rooted.

Credit: Getty

Professor Krugman seems miffed, via the NYT:

Modern conservatives have been lying about taxes pretty much from the beginning of their movement. Made-up sob stories about family farms broken up to pay inheritance taxes, magical claims about self-financing tax cuts, and so on go all the way back to the 1970s. But the selling of tax cuts under Trump has taken things to a whole new level, both in terms of the brazenness of the lies and their sheer number. Both the depth and the breadth of the dishonesty make it hard even for those of us who do this for a living to keep track.

You knew this was coming when the president* tweeted out how proud he was that his tax plan was praised by Arthur Laffer, the cocktail-napkin Kreskin of supply-side economics, the original sorcerer who concocted the spells that produced those magical tax cuts, and, finally, the guy who fed the Republican Party a bowl of the very tastiest monkeybrains. The prion disease’s first symptom was the adoption of what Poppy Bush called, correctly, the “voodoo economics” of Ronald Reagan’s first budget. The Republican Party bought into an economic theory that was just as detached from reality as anything Reagan ever said about trees and air pollution, or anything the current president* has said about anything. Continue reading “To Regain Its Sanity, the Republican Party Must Give Up Voodoo Economics”

It’s time to demolish the myth of trickle-down economics

The following article by Max Lawson was posted on the World Economic Forum website July 19, 2016:

The gap between rich and poor is reaching new extremes. Credit Suisse recently revealed that the richest 1% have now accumulated more wealth than the rest of the world put together.

This occurred a year earlier than Oxfam’s much publicized prediction ahead of last year’s World Economic Forum. Meanwhile, the wealth owned by the bottom half of humanity has fallen by a trillion dollars in the past five years. This is just the latest evidence that today we live in a world with levels of inequality we may not have seen for over a century.

Continue reading “It’s time to demolish the myth of trickle-down economics”