Tag: trump tax cuts
Why Would Any Voter Trust Republicans To Make A 'Better' Economy?

Why Would Any Voter Trust Republicans To Make A 'Better' Economy?

No delusion misleads American voters more than their certainty that Republicans are "better" and more worthy of "trust" on the economy than Democrats. Neither facts nor history support this durable fallacy, discredited by reams of studies over the years proving that Democratic administrations are consistently more successful in fostering economic growth, employment, family incomes, and nearly every other measure of prosperity — including reductions in the national debt.

That axiom has held true even when a Democratic president inherited the most miserable economic conditions from a Republican predecessor. It is certainly true of President Joe Biden, whose efforts to revive the United States from its pandemic slump have smashed records in the number of jobs created and sustained high employment. Inflation is beginning to abate, as are gas prices, and even so the latest quarterly data show renewed growth.

Yet because Americans are aggrieved over rising prices — and frightened by a potential recession — the mythology of Republican economic superiority now looms over the midterm elections. Evidently some voters aim to punish Biden for inflation by empowering his right-wing adversaries.

Before they do, perhaps they should ask how Republicans will exploit that enduring "trust" — and whether the result will be a "better" economy for them and their families. Based on past performance, and what Republican politicians themselves tell us, the only constituency that will see a better economy is the superrich.

In 2016, Donald Trump said he would close loopholes that allowed the very wealthy (including him) to avoid taxation. He also promised to erase the national debt and deficits in his first term. Instead, Trump and the Republicans in Congress passed an enormous tax cut that favored the wealthiest and inevitably exploded the deficit. Then the economy crashed.

Whatever their differences, that dismal Trump record is pretty much what George W. Bush achieved as president too. It is what Republicans always do.

Slashing taxes on the wealthy is what they yearn to do again — except that Sen. Rick Scott, who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has added an even "better" idea: He wants to raise income taxes on poor and working families, who make too little money to pay that levy under current law.

If you're a middle-class or working-class voter, in fact, there is a familiar agenda of economic policies that you can "trust" the Republicans to promote, because they are the same policies that the reactionary party has endeavored to enact since forever. They have vowed yet again, for instance, to ruin Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which serve as economic bulwarks for most Americans. And once more they are threatening to weaponize negotiations over the national debt ceiling to ram through those destructive cuts.

Will that be "better" for the older and disabled Americans who depend on those programs, and their families? Probably not, but what could be even worse is the recklessness of Republicans who would abrogate the credit of the United States Treasury to complete that cruel mission. So determined are they to cancel the benefits that Americans spend a lifetime earning that they would jeopardize the entire nation's economic stability.

You can "trust" their commitment to such financial insanity, which they continue to proclaim in this campaign, because they have pursued the same catastrophic scheme dating back to the bad old days of Speaker Newt Gingrich.

You can also trust the Republicans to seek total repeal of Biden's student-loan forgiveness plan, because they attempted to zero out all the federal student loan programs (the opposite of what Trump promised). Would that work "better" for middle-class students and their families? Presumably not, but it's what they insist on — with no proposal to improve college affordability.

For them it is now a matter of principle to have no principles, no platform, no constructive program. Remember when Trump promised a beautiful new health plan to replace the Affordable Care Act with something better that would insure everyone at low cost? Of course you do, just as you remember "Infrastructure Week," which came and went and came and went like Groundhog Day (until Biden finally passed the landmark Infrastructure Act).

In power, the Republicans will take that same pernicious approach to every aspect of economic policy that might improve life for working families. Not only would they refuse to increase minimum wages — highly popular across party lines — but nearly every one of them rejects the very idea of a minimum wage. They would obstruct any effort to reduce the cost of prescription drugs — also very popular — and repeal the provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act that are driving down those prices. They may still be too incompetent to repeal Obamacare, but that won't stop them from trying — and they will propose no "better" insurance plan to replace the health coverage they're so eager to strip away.

What you can assuredly trust the Republicans to do is what they always do. What you must never expect from them is anything better.

To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.


House Republicans Now Whine About Debt They Helped To Create

House Republicans Now Whine About Debt They Helped To Create

The Treasury Department announced last week that the national debt exceeded $30 trillion for the first time. In the days that followed, Republicans in Congress who helped rack up a large portion of that debt responded with outrage and were quick to try to pin the blame on President Joe Biden and their Democratic colleagues.

But many of the same Republicans who are currently treating the debt as a calamitous existential threat were largely silent on it during the previous administration. And they helped get it to the current level, through big spending and unfunded tax cuts.

"We have a $30 trillion debt, larger than our economy," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy complained Thursday in a House floor speech, calling the size of our debt one of the "two greatest threats to the future of the United States," along with China.

"Today is a sad day for the United States of America," Florida Sen. Rick Scott wrote on Friday. "For years, I have been warning about the devastating consequences of our rapidly rising federal debt, but its [sic] fallen on deaf ears in Washington."

"$30,000,000,000,000," tweeted Iowa Rep. Randy Feenstra. "This enormous figure should scare us all. Since 1990, our debt has grown tenfold and there's no indication this is the ceiling."

Though the figure was already more than $27 trillion before Democrats took control of the White House and Congress at the start of 2021, some GOP lawmakers suggested that they were to blame for the entire total.

"$30T in debt under Biden," Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy dishonestly claimed.

"!! 30 TRILLION !! For the first time in American history, our country’s debt has exceeded $30,000,000,000,000," said Arizona Rep. Debbie Lesko. "This is America under a one-party rule."

Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe added, "This unprecedented, reckless spending is unacceptable. It’s past time to get this spending under control and ensure our children and grandchildren aren’t saddled with the consequences of Dems’ poor decision making for generations to come."

It is unclear how big a threat the level of debt really is. A July 2020 assessment by Brookings Institution senior fellow David Wessel noted that "for now" the debt level was not a problem, but that it could become one. "No one really knows at what level a government's debt begins to hurt an economy; there’s a heated debate among economists on that question," he said.

John Jay College of Criminal Justice economics professor J.W. Mason told Quartz last Wednesday that the $30 trillion figure was somewhat misleading, as $8 trillion of that is money the federal government owes to itself — such as funds borrowed from Social Security trust funds.

Over the past 21 years, Senate Republicans voted for about $8.5 trillion in spending and revenue reductions.

President Bill Clinton left office in 2001 with a budget surplus. Rather than pay down the existing debt, congressional Republicans passed President George W. Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, adding more than $1.4 trillion to the deficit. They also backed his long Iraq War, at a cost of more than $2 trillion.

During President Barack Obama's time in office, Republicans rebranded themselves as debt hawks and used the Tea Party movement to win a House majority in the 2010 midterms on a promise to address the budget deficit.

In 2016, candidate Donald Trump ran on a promise to balance the budget and get rid of the national debt entirely "fairly quickly."

But once he took office in 2017, Trump and his party quickly dropped the issue. Trump never put forward a plan to balance the budget and House and Senate Republicans did little to reign in his spending on defense, a border wall that Mexico did not pay for, and tax cuts for the rich.

Their Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 meant about $1.9 trillion in additional debt spending between 2018 and 2028. Even before the 2020 coronavirus pandemic shut down much of the nation's economy, Trump's policies meant borrowing trillions.

Once COVID-19 hit the U.S., both parties joined together to spend several trillion more on public health, relief checks, and support for businesses to help them avoid layoffs. In total $7.8 trillion was added to the debt over Trump's single term in the White House.

Once Biden took office, Republicans quickly remembered the debt as an issue. Some even admitted that they deserved some of the blame for the problem.

"I don't think anybody has a very good record for the last decade on this," Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri told Fox News in April 2021.

"I mean the previous administration, debt and deficits weren't a high priority for them," Minority Whip John Thune admitted that March.

Both still voted last February for an unsuccessful amendment aimed at making Trump's individual tax cuts permanent.

They and every other Republican in Congress then opposed Biden's Build Back Better proposals, which would have invested in climate and caregiving infrastructure but actually reduced the national debt. GOP leaders said standing against the plan's increased taxes on those earning $400,000 and up and on corporations was their "red line."

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

How Much Blame Does Biden Deserve For Inflation Woes?

How Much Blame Does Biden Deserve For Inflation Woes?

President Joe Biden's standing with voters has taken a beating on multiple fronts. He is perceived as not focusing on issues they care about, particularly inflation.

Inflation is a president slayer. Richard Nixon imposed wage and price controls. When they were lifted, prices soared even higher. Would Nixon have been removed over Watergate if the economy had been better?

Gerald Ford issued red and white lapel pins proclaiming "WIN," which stood for "Whip Inflation Now." Inflation was unimpressed. Ford got whipped by Jimmy Carter in the 1976 election.

Inflation dogged the Carter presidency as well. Carter did eventually appoint a determined inflation hawk, Paul Volcker, to lead the Federal Reserve. He threw the nation into a recession by hiking interest rates. Ronald Reagan defeated Carter in 1980.

Does Biden deserve the blame for inflation? Not to the degree people are saying.

Senate Republicans held a press conference in July blaming the "insane tax and spending spree of President Biden and the Democrats for six straight months of raging inflation." In December, Sen. Mitch McConnell tweeted: "It is unthinkable that Senate Democrats would try to respond to this inflation report by ramming through another massive socialist spending package in a matter of days."

Whoa. Biden did pass a large COVID-19 bill early in his term, but the rest of the "socialism" Republicans are fulminating about did not pass.

Republicans are suddenly crying "socialism!" but let's be fair. While the government has been pumping money into the economy at a record clip over the past 14 years, most of that has been the work of the Federal Reserve, and former President Donald Trump was the most vociferous proponent of easy money we've ever seen.

Since the financial crisis of 2008, the Federal Reserve has been shoveling money out the door with pitchforks, and in the wake of COVID-19, both the central bank and the federal government have been "dropping money from helicopters," to use the image coined by Milton Friedman.

Many economists believe the Fed was right to do this as a response to the financial crisis of 2008. The controversy arises about when it was time to stop. Arguably, the Trump years were the right time. But that's not what the Trump-led GOP favored.

Trump's money gusher began in 2017 with the $1.9 trillion tax cut that wasn't matched with any spending cuts.

Trump appointed Jerome Powell to the Fed but quickly soured on him when he didn't increase the money supply quickly enough for Trump's taste. Powell was soon on the receiving end of Trump tweets. He argued that "we need rate cuts and easing" (exactly the opposite of what we needed).

If Republicans were worried about inflation, they might have spoken up about Trump's attempt to flood the economy with easy cash (to say nothing of eroding the norm about political influence on the Fed).

Then came COVID-19. Most people think the big federal cash infusion, the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, was a necessary response to the emergency. It saved many from destitution. But that money, combined with the trillions of dollars of quantitative easing and near-zero interest rates over the past decade and a half, certainly set the stage for inflation. Congress passed an additional $900 billion in December of 2020 — which Trump signed — for a grand total of over $3 trillion in COVID-19 relief.

Again, all of this money sloshed into the economy before Biden took the oath of office.

Was it wise for Biden to pass yet another COVID-19 relief package, the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, in 2021? I don't think so. But did it cause the inflation we're experiencing now?

The annual inflation rate for most things Americans buy was already at the highest level in a decade before Biden entered the White House. And inflation is global. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, inflation among its 38 member states is running higher than at any point since 2008.

So, even if Biden is only partially responsible for the inflation we've got, there are steps he can take. One would be to remove the Trump-imposed tariffs, which are taxes that raise the price of goods to Americans. Another would be to promote more legal immigration. We are suffering a severe labor shortage in all areas. More labor would ease bottlenecks at ports and in transportation. Make keeping schools open a priority. Remote learning has been terrible for kids, and many parents cannot work if their kids are not in school.

Biden should forthrightly address what's on voters' minds. He's gotten tangled up in internecine fights with other Democrats over matters voters don't know or care about and that he can't even win. If they sense he's not really engaged in controlling the inflation menace, it could well do to him what it has done to other presidents.

Reprinted with permission from Creators.com

Sinema Now Defending Trump Tax Cuts She Condemned

Sinema Now Defending Trump Tax Cuts She Condemned

Reprinted with permission from DailyKos

It's Sen. Kyrsten Sinema's turn to play the skunk at President Joe Biden's picnic. It's almost as if she and Sen. Joe Manchin are deliberately working together to try to kill the large budget reconciliation package that will contain his Build Back Better programs. It's turning into a dangerous game of Whack-a-Mole: Manchin presents his unreasonable demands and the White House and fellow Democrats scramble to meet them, only to have Sinema then pop up with her must-haves. Or in this case, must-have-nots.

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