The political system is rigged for the richest insiders in America.
When we talk about the insider, who are we talking about? It’s the comfortable politician only looking out for his own interest. It is the lobbyist who knows how to put that perfect loophole in every single bill to get richer and richer and richer at your expense.
The richest Americans are paying nothing, and it is ridiculous. These guys shift paper around, and they get lucky. These hedge-fund guys are getting away with murder, when you have one who is making $200 million a year and paying very low taxes. It’s not fair. And it tells people a lot. The middle class is getting absolutely destroyed. This country won’t have a middle class soon. It’s got to end.
.. What fools Trump made of those Midwestern voters who wanted the reality star to go after Washington and New York elites. As “Too Big to Fail” author Andrew Ross Sorkin reported this week, “If you’re a billionaire with your own company and are happy to use your private jet so you can ‘commute’ from a low-tax state, the plan is a godsend. . . ... Those rich insiders whom Trump walloped on his way to the White House will get more than 80 percent of this tax plan’s benefits at the end of a decade... such a massive giveaway to the very hedge-fund managers and real estate executives he promised as a candidate to confront only adds to the stench of self-dealing that engulfs all things Trump. Like autocrats across the world, the 45th American president has perfected the art of the self-deal... There will be no justification for having thrown on an additional $1.5 trillion to our existing $20 trillion debt — at a time when unemployment was low, consumer confidence was high and Wall Street was setting records by the day... It should be painfully obvious to a first-year economics student that there is no rational reason to pass massive tax breaks for billionaires when the economy is humming along. The only justification can be political.
.. Trump was right to say then that the political system is rigged for the richest of Americans. Unfortunately, it is now Trump’s working-class supporters who will pay the highest price for believing any promise that tumbled out of the mouth of the phony plutocratic populist.
The Myth Of Trump’s Economic Populism, As Proved By The Tax Bill
“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.
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?
The Real Reason for Republicans’ Silence on Donald Trump
Their fellow legislators have silently accepted his outrages in exchange for policies they’ve always wanted.
At his inauguration Mr. Trump said his presidency was about “transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you, the American people.” But he and his allies in Congress are transferring power to Wall Street, fossil fuel companies, the chemical industry and other special interests, and are stoking an anti-populist bonfire to incinerate protections for consumers and workers.
.. On Tuesday night the Senate, with a tiebreaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence, followed the House in voting to overturn a rule that would have allowed consumers to file class-action lawsuits against banks and other financial institutions, rather than be forced to take their disputes to arbitration.
.. Mr. Trump signed an executive order allowing insurers to sell skimpy health insurance plans that do not protect people with pre-existing conditions and that will destabilize the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces.
.. His administration shortened the open enrollment period when people can buy insurance policies for next year, and slashed spending on advertising and outreach efforts.
.. Congress overturned a rule restricting the ability of coal companies to dump their mining debris into streams and other waterways, threatening rural communities, forests and wildlife.
.. The head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, rejected a staff recommendation to ban the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which has been linked to developmental problems in children, and started the process to overturn the Clean Power Plan, the Obama-era proposal to reduce planet-warming emissions from power plants.
.. Congress repealed a Securities and Exchange Commission rule that sought to expose and limit corruption by requiring oil and mining companies to disclose payments to foreign governments.