The following article by Seth Hanlon, Sam Berger, Alex Rowell, Galen Hendricks, Regina Willensky Benjamin, Kevin DeGood, Eliza Schultz, Joe Valenti and Marc Jarsulic was posted on the Center for American Progress website January 29, 2018:
In his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Donald Trump is sure to point to stock indexes and other positive economic indicators as evidence of a “Trump boom.” But to the extent that middle-class and working families are doing better economically, it is not because of Trump or his policies; rather, it is in spite of them. Instead of fighting for American workers, as he promised to do during his presidential campaign, Trump has sought in numerous ways to disempower them.
The Trump administration’s fiscal policies are redistributing income and wealth upward through massive new tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy, which come at the expense of middle-class and low-income Americans and investments in key economic priorities such as infrastructure. And by ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) initiative, the administration has thrown the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people—who, with DACA, have been able to get better- and better-paying jobs, buy houses and cars, and make significant economic contributions to the nation as a whole—into chaos. Continue reading “State of the Union Preview: Trump Is Rigging the Economy Against Workers and the Middle Class”