Tag: GOP tax cut for the rich

Growth Has Lifted Counties That Voted for Trump. Mostly, It’s the Wealthy Ones.

The followoing article by Campbell Robertson and Jim Tankersley was posted on the New York Times website September 3, 2018:

President Trump’s economy has left the most distressed swaths of the country waiting for their share of the good times.

“You could feel things getting better and better,” said Tom Hughes, a homebuilder in St. Charles County, Mo., describing how his business began to rebound from the recession over the last few years.

ST. CHARLES, Mo. — The prosperity is apparent on the way into town: the 21-floor casino resort and spa on one side of the interstate, and on the other a freshly built retail quarter of boutiques, a brand-new Hilton hotel and a P.F. Chang’s. It unfolds from there along the highways heading west with more gleaming office parks and multiplying subdivisions.

This is not the Trump country of the popular imagination, the land of shuttered plants and the economically left behind. St. Charles County, in the suburbs northwest of St. Louis, has had the highest median household income in Missouri for several years.

But in 2016, Donald J. Trump won the county by 26 points, and he is still popular among people like Tom Hughes, a homebuilder whose business was rebounding from the recession before Mr. Trump took office.

View the complete article here.

Help Wanted: Here’s Why America’s Labor Force Is Still Struggling — While Corporate Profits are Going Gangbusters

The following article by Jim Hightower was posted on the AlterNet website August 29, 2018:

The deeper issue is the overall lack of respect for workaday people.

Credit: Andreas Klinke Johannsen

Workers of America, rejoice!

As our nation of working stiffs celebrates Labor Day with backyard cookouts, an afternoon at the beach, rounds of golf, special sales at the mall or simply kicking back in a La-Z-Boy and doing several rounds of 12-ounce elbow bends, we can all take comfort in the happy news that our economy is whizzing! Yes, corporate economists exult that our US of A is enjoying the second-longest economic expansion on record; profits are off the charts; job creation continues to surge; wages are rising; and consumers are racking up record levels of purchases. What’s not to like about all that?

Two things. First, the economists’ claim about wage growth is a sham, covering up the shame that top corporate executives and major shareholders are grabbing nearly all of the economic gains produced by America’s entire workforce. The so-called nominal wage (i.e. the sum that workers see on their paychecks) has risen only 2.7 percent in the past year, a very mediocre result for the 82 percent of the labor force that is non-managerial worker bees.

View the complete article here.

Corporations Have Biggest Profit Gain In Six Years

Trump continues to build an economy focused on rewarding wealthy corporations at the expense of working families. The Trump tax law gave massive new tax breaks to big corporations and did nothing for workers. Now, while corporations just had their best profit gain in six years, real wages for workers continue to decline.

Corporations just had their best 12-month profit gain in six years largely thanks to the Trump tax law.

Wall Street Journal: “The Commerce Department said its broadest measure of profits across the U.S. economy rose 16.1% from the second quarter a year earlier, the largest year-over-year gain in six years. Taxes were a big part of the boost to the bottom line. Taxes paid by U.S. companies were down 33% from a year earlier, according to the new government data, or more than $100 billion at an annual rate.”

Continue reading “Corporations Have Biggest Profit Gain In Six Years”

Dems Call Monkey Business on Florida Rep’s Yacht Purchase

The following article by Stephanie Akin was posted on the Roll Call website August 23, 2018:

Democrats have seized on reports questioning Rep. Vern Buchanan’s 2017 yacht purchase as they look for an advantage in the race for Florida’s 16th district. Credit: Bill Clark, CQ Roll Call

The new yacht smell has barely worn off of Vern Buchanan’s 73-foot ocean liner. But it is causing the Florida congressman’s re-election campaign to take on water this week, after a report raising questions about the seven-figure bank loan Buchanan used to finance the vessel.

Buchanan, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, borrowed as much as $5 million from a Canadian bank that was lobbying for the GOP tax bill in 2017, the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting said. Buchanan, who leads the Ways and Means subcommittee on tax policy, bought the boat on the same day he voted for the tax package.

It is unclear how much drag the episode will have on Buchanan’s campaign. Inside Elections with Nathan Gonzales ranks the district Likely Republican. But Democrats, seeing an opportunity to throw the six-term incumbent off course, bore down.

View the complete article here.

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.

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.

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.

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.