The federal deficit swelled by nearly 17 percent largely because of a sharp decline in corporate tax revenues after the Trump tax law. Trump said his tax law would pay for itself, and he claimed he would quickly eliminate the national debt and balance the budget. We now know those were all lies.
LIE: The Trump administration claimed the tax law would “pay for itself” and even suggested it already has.
Secretary Mnuchin: “‘This will be the most significant change to the tax code since Reagan,’ he said, adding that the plan ‘will pay for itself’ by boosting economic growth.”
A new poll shows that nearly two-thirds of Americans say they have not seen their take-home pay increase as a result of the Trump tax law. The truth about the Trump tax law is that it’s not benefiting working families — it has only increased the gap between the richest Americans and everyone else.
Americans have not benefited from the Trump tax law. It’s clear why more Americans still disapprove than approve of the law.
64% of Americans say they have not seen an increase in their take-home pay from the Trump tax law.
A majority of Americans say the Trump tax law has not helped their family financially.
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.”
Karin Housley has demonstrated a casual disregard for doing the work to learn about the issues that affect Minnesota families. Today, let’s look at Housley’s inability to explain what she would do on the Republican tax law.
When asked recently whether she thought changes should be made to the Republican tax law, which adds $1.5 trillion to the national debt and risks major cuts to Social Security and Medicare, Housley declared, “We still need to make some tweaks, it’s not perfect.”
But when pressed on what tweaks she would like to see to the law — which also provides 83% of its benefits to the richest 1% of people and gives a trillion-dollar tax cut to big corporations, including prescription drug companies, big oil and Wall Street — Housley was unable to name a single change she would make to the federal law. Her only response: “Well we have here in Minnesota, where we didn’t get the tax conformity bill.” Continue reading “Housley and the GOP Tax Law: A Casual Disregard for Doing the work for Minnesotans”
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.
