“Trumpian populism remains a tantalizing promise for people who are interested in it.”
Olsen expected the tax plan to include some of Trump’s populist campaign promises — that the rich would pay more, the forgotten working class would pay less, and special interest loopholes like the carried-interest provision for hedge-fund managers would be gone.
But the tax bill ended up instead being traditionally Republican in its focus on cutting taxes for the well-to-do but barely touching the working class and not helping the middle class to a significant degree.
.. “That’s not what Trump promised,” Olsen said. “And it’s not what Trump’s voters thought they were getting.”
Whatever happened to Ivanka Trump’s child care tax credit?
One of the biggest disappointments for conservatives who believed that Trump could have offered a new, more reform-minded populist economics was the failure of the expanded child care tax credit offered by Republican Sens. Mike Lee and Marco Rubio.
It was an actual populist idea, geared to the working class, because it was refundable against payroll taxes. But not only did Republican leaders oppose it, they made sure it failed by requiring it to get 60 votes, unlike other amendments.
.. The tax bill might not be the kind of populist piece of legislation Trump promised during the campaign, but it does have a lot in it to make conservatives happy. Obamacare is unraveled; there are more tax breaks for people who home-school their kids or send them to religious schools;
.. Maybe the most important thing Trump offers his supporters isn’t economic policy or any policy at all — it’s his racially charged Twitter feed and the cultural grievances it directs at immigrants, Muslims and millionaire black athletes.
Sure, Trump’s followers like the idea of having fewer tax brackets, said conservative Ben Domenech, publisher of TheFederalist.com, but, “What gets them riled up and active is the embrace of the culture-war issues — that Trump has shown himself perfectly happy to fight in a way that Republicans in a lot of other positions have been unwilling to traditionally.”
There have always been two parts to the Republican Party’s message: conservative social issues for its white, blue-collar, evangelical base (think school prayer, abortion, same-sex marriage, immigration and crime) and a supply-side, trickle-down economic message for the rich and corporations. Trump has taken this two-pronged approach and put it on steroids.His tax bill is much more tilted to the wealthy than the tax bills of Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. And his white-identity politics is much more raw and more central to his persona.
It’s as if the Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street and the wealthy get the policy, while Trump’s blue-collar base gets the Twitter feed.
The Republican War on Children
Would you be willing to take health care away from a thousand children with the bad luck to have been born into low-income families so that you could give millions of extra dollars to just one wealthy heir?
.. The other day Senator Orrin Hatch, asked about the program (which he helped create), once again insisted that it will be funded — but without saying when or how (and there don’t seem to be any signs of movement on the issue). And he further declared, “The reason CHIP’s having trouble is that we don’t have money anymore.” Then he voted for an immense tax cut.
.. The number of taxable estates is also, by the way, well under one one-thousandth of the number of children covered by CHIP.
.. but children’s health care is relatively cheap compared with care for older Americans. In fiscal 2016 the program cost only $15 billion, a tiny share of the federal budget.
As you see, then, my question wasn’t at all hypothetical. By their actions, Republicans are showing that they consider it more important to give extra millions to one already wealthy heir than to provide health care to a thousand children.
.. And when you hear about family farms broken up to pay estate tax, remember: Nobody has ever come up with a modern example.
.. Then there’s the argument of Senator Chuck Grassley that we need to eliminate estate taxes to reward those who don’t spend their money on “booze or women or movies.” Yes, indeed, letting the likes of Donald Trump Jr. inherit wealth tax-free is a reward for their fathers’ austere lifestyles.
.. there’s considerable evidence that aiding lower-income children actually saves money in the long run.
.. Children who get adequate care are more likely to be healthier and more productive when they become adults, which means that they’ll earn more and pay more in taxes. They’re also less likely to become disabled and need government support. One recent study estimated that the government in fact earns a return of between 2 and 7 percent on the money it spends insuring children... broadly similar results have been found for the food stamp program: Ensuring adequate nutrition for the young means healthier, more productive adults, so that in the long run this aid costs taxpayers little or nothing... That is, however, exactly what’s happening. And it’s as bad, in its own way, as that same party’s embrace of a child molester because they expect him to vote for tax cuts.
This Tax Plan Puts Another Knife Into American Democracy
Deep down, investors know that when patriots put country ahead of self, everyone benefits.
Less than a decade ago, after years of dramatic deregulation coupled with revenue-draining tax cuts, the entire U.S. financial system effectively collapsed. It took down with it millions of American consumers, workers, small businesses, retirees and middle-class homeowners.
The country can’t afford this kind of outcome again. That’s why I want to be as straight as possible: Despite what you may believe, the Republican tax plan taking shape is a sham. It will lead to more pain and less prosperity for the vast majority of Americans.
.. Stopping it will be good for investors’ bank accounts, because when Main Street and the rest of the nation does well, so does the financial sector. Trickle-down economics doesn’t work, but trickle-up does. Trying to re-enact Reaganomics under completely different circumstances may well lead the economy back into a recession—one that the country will be ill-equipped to weather after the GOP proposal adds $1 trillion to the national debt.
.. The plan’s massive tax cuts won’t reinvigorate the economy. For years corporations have enjoyed historically high profits, but investment hasn’t increased alongside them. Last month at a meeting of The Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council, an editor asked attendees whether they would boost investment if the tax bill passed. Few hands went up.
.. Sixty-two percent of the benefits from the Senate bill’s tax cuts flow to the top 1% of earners
.. Honest analyses indicate that the Republican proposal overwhelmingly helps the wealthy and is probably a net negative for almost everyone else. That’s largely because it will be paid for with money taken out of the pockets of working Americans and their children: The tax cuts will be used as an excuse to further gut investments in education, health care and training. Slashing these services for working Americans will stunt the country’s future prosperity and weaken the overall economy.
.. the American people will not be fooled by the noise. If they see a bill passed that hands out filet mignon to the wealthy while leaving them struggling over scraps, they will be furious. Once again, they’ll realize that the system serves the needs of those at the top and ignores working families. They’ll consider this more evidence of corruption. And it will be harder than ever to argue otherwise.
.. Passing this tax plan, which adds to workers’ pain, would put another knife into American democracy. It would be a true disaster.
.. When 1 in 3 Americans say they are still struggling to recover from the Great Recession, is it
- worth saving the Trump family $1 billion by repealing the estate tax?
- Worth increasing insurance premiums for middle-class families in the individual market by $2,000, as the Center for American Progress estimates the Senate bill would?
- Worth taxing tuition waivers, making it prohibitively expensive for young people to get advanced degrees and thus sacrificing America’s economic competitiveness down the road?
- Worth cutting Medicare by $25 billion?
- Worth ending tax credits for clean energy, sabotaging one of the most promising industries for the 21st century, while protecting much larger tax breaks for oil and gas?
An 11th-Hour Raid by the Wealthiest Baby Boomers
The baby boom is being evicted from the penthouse of American politics. And on the way out, it has decided to trash the place.
.. In that way, the bills would intensify the generational inequity in how Washington allocates resources between the country’s increasingly diverse youthful generations and its predominantly white older population, groups I’ve called “the brown and the gray.” At a moment when political influence is inexorably shifting to the brown, the tax bill represents an 11th hour raid by the wealthiest of the gray.
.. The baby-boom generation, which has voted reliably Republican in recent years, has been the largest generation of eligible voters since 1978. But in 2018, for the first time, slightly more Millennials than baby boomers will be eligible to vote
.. Higher turnout rates among baby boomers will preserve their advantage among actual voters for a while. But sometime around 2024, Millennials will likely surpass them.
.. While about 80 percent of the baby boom is white, over two-fifths of Millennials and nearly half of the post-Millennials are not.
.. Washington today is spending nearly the lowest amount ever recorded on the domestic discretionary programs that invest in the productivity of future generations, such as education and advanced scientific research.
.. One of 21st-century America’s central dynamics is that an increasingly non-white workforce will be funding Social Security and Medicare for a rapidly growing number of white seniors as the baby boomers retire.
.. Tellingly, though, the “Better Way” budget blueprint House Republicans released last year proposed delaying changes in Medicare until 2024, when almost all of the baby boom has already retired. That would leave younger generations, starting with Generation X, to bear most of any future cutbacks—even as they shoulder the costs for the boomers’ more generous retirement.
.. Young people will also pay the tax plans’ most direct cost: the interest on that $1.5 trillion in additional federal debt. More debt could benefit younger generations if it’s spent on investments in their futures. But this tax cut will bury younger generations in debt to fund the current consumption of their elders.
.. the irony is that older, white America needs more of younger, diverse America to ascend into the middle class so it can generate the tax revenue to support the baby boom’s retirement. Yet with these tax bills, the old are strapping a boulder onto the backs of the young as they attempt that climb.