Tag: right wing
Biden Tax Proposal Provokes Right-Wing Defense Of 'Trickle-Down Economics'

Biden Tax Proposal Provokes Right-Wing Defense Of 'Trickle-Down Economics'

After President Joe Biden called for an end to “trickle-down economics” and promoted a vision of the U.S. in which the wealthy “pay their fair share” of taxes during his March 7 State of the Union address, conservative media figures defended the discredited economic model and decried the president's call to tax the rich.

But experts reacting to Biden's speech noted that the president was correct when he argued that tax cuts for the rich have been a policy failure. Multiple studies examining decades of “trickle-down economics” show that such policies have overwhelmingly benefited the rich.

Biden called for the end of “trickle-down economics” policies that don't help the middle class

During his State of the Union address, Biden laid out a vision of the future in which corporations and wealthy individuals pay “their fair share” of taxes and the U.S. abandons the myth of “trickle-down economics.”

“I want to talk about the future of possibilities that we can build together. A future where the days of trickle-down economics are over, and the wealthy and the biggest corporations no longer get all the tax breaks.”

Biden added: “I grew up in a home where trickle-down economics didn’t put much on my dad’s kitchen table. That’s why I determined to turn things around, so the middle class does well. When they do well, the poor have a way up, and the wealthy still do very well. We all do well.”

Later in the speech, Biden called on Congress to “make the tax code fair” by making “big corporations, the very wealthy, finally begin to pay their fair share.” Biden emphasized that making the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share of taxes is vital to “the question of fundamental fairness for all Americans.”

He called out the Trump administration, which “enacted a $2 trillion tax cut, overwhelmingly benefit[ing] the top 1% — the very wealthy and the biggest corporations — and exploded the federal deficit.”

Biden also called for raising the corporate minimum tax rate “to at least 21%” and for a “minimum tax for billionaires at 25%.”

Economic research backs up Biden's criticism of failed “trickle-down” policies

Experts at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities validated the president’s critique of tax breaks for the wealthy — especially those created by Trump’s unpopular 2017 legislation, officially known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Chuck Marr, CBPP's vice president of federal tax policy, noted: “As President Biden is highlighting, the Trump tax law was skewed to the rich, was extremely expensive, and failed to trickle-down.”

Marr added: “The corporate tax rate cut is Exhibit A: the benefits went to executives, not workers.”

CBPP President Sharon Parrott posted: “The President is right. We need to raise revenues on high income households and corporations to make high-value investments in people, communities, and the economy and to improve our fiscal outlook.”

Center for Economic and Policy Research senior economist Dean Baker noted during the speech that “Republicans are upset that Biden has made taxes mandatory for the rich, not just ordinary people.”

The official CEPR account on X also explained that the wealthiest Americans have already stopped paying taxes into Social Security for this year, because the payroll tax does not apply on income above $168,600.

“Millionaires stopped paying into #SocialSecurity 5 days ago,” the post read. “We’re glad @POTUS called out the rigged tax system, which puts the burden of paying for #SocialSecurity on working-class people. #ScrapTheCap so the rich pay their fair share.”

Melissa Boteach, vice president for income security and child care at the National Women’s Law Center, posted that Biden was “hitting it out of the park on tax fairness. Policies to #taxtherich are fundamental to investing in our families and are HUGELY popular across” political parties.

“Trickle-down economics” has further enriched the wealthy and increased national debt

  • A 2012 Congressional Research Service report, which analyzed tax cuts for the rich since 1945, concluded that tax cuts for the wealthy don’t stimulate economic growth. A September 2012 report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service determined that “changes over the past 65 years to the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth,” adding, “The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie.” The report further concluded that these tax cuts served to exacerbate economic inequality, stating that ”top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with increasing concentrations of income at the top of the income distribution." The CRS report dealt such a heavy blow to trickle-down economic orthodoxy that Senate Republicans fought to suppress the report's findings. The report was eventually revised and re-released months later and featured most of the same conclusions. [Congressional Research Service, 9/14/12, 12/12/12; The New York Times, 11/1/12; NBC News, 12/13/12]
  • A 2020 study analyzed the effects of tax cuts for the rich spanning “five decades in 18 wealthy nations” and found that “the rich got richer and there was no meaningful effect on unemployment or economic growth.” Researchers at The London School of Economics and Political Science published a working paper in 2020 analyzing the tax regimes of 18 major developed economies that concluded that “major reforms reducing taxes on the rich lead to higher income inequality as measured by the top 1% share of pre-tax national income.” In a later interview with LSE’s economics blog, one of the researchers who conducted the study added: “Our results align pretty closely with some work from Thomas Piketty, that would suggest that what happens if you cut taxes on the rich is that they then bargain more aggressively for their own compensation at the direct expense of workers lower down the income distribution.” [LSE International Inequalities Institute, December 2020; The London School of Economics, 1/24/23]
  • A new study of Trump's 2017 tax cuts for the rich found it produced wage gains far below what was promised and that, instead of paying for itself as Republicans promised, it added “more than $100 billion a year” to the national debt. The New York Times reported that the study “found the cuts delivered wage gains that were ‘an order of magnitude below’ what Trump officials predicted: about $750 per worker per year on average over the long run, compared to promises of $4,000 to $9,000 per worker.” [The New York Times, 3/4/24; National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2024]
  • Economists predicted in 2016 that Trump's “nonsense … supply-side, trickle-down economics” would do nothing to help the economy. After Trump unveiled his tax and economic policy proposals in August 2016, economists and tax policy experts from across the political spectrum slammed his plan. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich dismissed Trump's plan as the “normal nonsense of supply-side, trickle-down economics” characteristic of Republican politicians. Conservative tax analyst Ryan Ellis noted that Trump’s proposed deduction for child-care expenses “would provide no benefit to low income workers and single parents who are unlikely to have any tax liability to begin with.” University of Michigan economist Betsey Stevenson posted that “Trump's economic plan focuses in on those he thinks need the most help: the 540 billionaires in the U.S.” [Media Matters, 8/9/16]

Right-wing media responded by defending failed tax cut policies and rejecting Biden’s take
    • Fox & Friends First co-host Todd Piro: “The dirty little secret” is “if you tax corporations more, jobs will go away.” Pirro continued: “At the end of the day, corporations are going to hit that number … whether it comes through increased output or at the sake of you and our jobs.” Pirro also dismissed “the typical tropes of tax the rich, who, in reality, pay most if not close to all of the taxes in this country.” Fox financial contributor Cheryl Casone interjected, “50%.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends First, 3/8/24]
    • National Review senior writer Noah Rothman defended “trickle-down economics” from Biden’s critique. National Review posted on X (formerly known as Twitter): “@NoahCRothman: Biden indicts ‘trickle-down economics’ because it did little to help his family when he was growing up. But Biden grew up in the 1950s and early 60s, when the top marginal tax rates approached 50%. Which is to say that Joe Biden did not, in fact, grow up during a period typified by ‘trickle-down economics.’” [Twitter/X, 3/7/24]
    • National Review senior writer Dan McLaughlin: “Biden’s rants against ‘trickle down economics’ have not changed a whit since he was singing this tune throughout the Reagan years, railing against growth and prosperity.” [Twitter/X, 3/7/24]
    • Fox Business host Charles Payne: “The top 1.0% pay almost 50% of income taxes...what is fair? What is punitive? It’s all deflection from runaway spending.” [Twitter/X, 3/7/24]
    • Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade: “Love the class warfare…let’s simplify the tax code to make Americans hate rich people …what a unifier!!…lets make rich people pay more to taxes so they can stop hiring people and buying buildings, cars, planes and give to charities.” [Twitter/X, 3/7/24]
    • Committee to Unleash Prosperity President Phil Kerpen: “The tax share of the rich is by far the highest it has ever been under the Trump tax cuts. Biden's tax hikes will harm the economy and reduce the share paid by the rich. It happens every time.” [Twitter/X, 3/7/24]

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    Medical Experts See 'Gross Signs Of Dementia' Whenever Trump Speaks

    Medical Experts See 'Gross Signs Of Dementia' Whenever Trump Speaks

    Right-have media outlets have been obsessed with 81-year-old President Joe Biden's age, often conflating his gaffes with mental impairment while portraying 77-year-old Donald Trump as youthful and energetic — and either ignoring or downplaying Trump's verbal difficulties, such as confusing former South Carolina Nikki Haley with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) during a recent speech.

    Salon's Chauncey DeVega makes a Biden/Trump comparison in an article published on March 7 and reports that Trump's problems, according to medical experts, are much worse.

    "Whatever one may think of Donald Trump the political leader, and all of the evil and vile things he has done in that capacity, he is a human being who appears to be in crisis," DeVega warns. "Moreover, that Donald Trump is leading President Biden in the polls and has a real chance of becoming the next president of the United States should be a source of great alarm for anyone who claims to care about the wellbeing of the country and its future."

    One of the Salon interviewees quoted in DeVega's report is Dr. John Gartner, a psychologist and former professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

    Gartner told Salon, "Not enough people are sounding the alarm that based on his behavior, and in my opinion, Donald Trump is dangerously demented. In fact, we are seeing the opposite among too many in the news media, the political leaders and among the public. There is also this focus on Biden's gaffes or other things that are well within the normal limits of aging. By comparison, Trump appears to be showing gross signs of dementia. This is a tale of two brains: Biden's brain is aging, Trump's brain is dementing."

    Harry Segal of Cornell University and Weill Cornell Medical School notes that Trump's campaign speeches have been increasingly "erratic."

    Segal told Salon, "In the past six months, Trump's rallies are filled with strange lapses of logic. He has confused Biden with (Barack) Obama, spoke of World War 2, and has lapsed into bewildering digressions that are hard to follow. Only this weekend, he said, 'We have languages coming into our country that no one can speak' — a strange grasping for meaning, bordering on neologism. At other times, he seems to get lost in the middle of a sentence."

    Vincent Greenwood, executive director of the Washington Center For Cognitive Therapy, argues that Trump is showing "confusion with increasing regularity."

    Greenwood told Salon, "We all stumble over and mispronounce words occasionally. This is not what is going on with Trump. The incidence of these kinds of mistakes takes him into this realm of phonemic paraphasia, which is a sign of underlying brain damage, not just aging. Even when compared to his speech of a few years ago, you can observe a noticeable difference. When you compare it to his speech as a middle-aged man, the shift is radical and ominous."

    Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

    Maria Bartiromo

    Fox Hosts Roar In Defense Of Credit Card 'Junk Fees'

    Some in right-wing media are criticizing the Biden administration for creating an interagency strike force to crack down on what it described as “unfair and illegal pricing” schemes, including enforcing a new federal rule that would cap credit card late fees for major credit card companies at $8 and save tens of millions of Americans billions of dollars annually.

    • The Biden administration is cracking down on “unfair and illegal” price gouging by major corporations
      • On March 5, President Biden launched a “Strike Force on Unfair and Illegal Pricing” co-chaired by the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice. Biden launched an interagency strike force to tackle “unfair and illegal” price increases by large corporations, which according to CNBC “Biden sees as a major reason why consumers are not yet feeling the impact of cooling inflation rates and a strong economy.” FTC Chair Lina Khan announced to reporters that the strike force “builds on the FTC’s far-reaching work to promote competition and tackle unlawful business practices that are inflating costs for Americans.” [The White House, 3/5/24; CNBC, 3/5/24]
      • The strike force's launch coincides with a new CFPB restriction that caps credit card late fees at $8. Citing CFPB data, the New York Times reported that such late fees “have become a major profit source for credit card issuers, generating more than $14 billion in 2022.” According to the Times, the bureau also indicated that credit card issuers have been exploiting a loophole in a 2010 Federal Reserve rule that allowed credit card issuers to adjust late fees based on inflation and raised “their fees far beyond the actual costs they incur when payments arrive late." NPR noted that “by law, the fees are supposed to be tied to a credit card issuer's own costs associated with the late payment,” but the bureau “found that even as banks have adopted cheaper processes for dealing with late payments, the fees have continued to climb.” [The New York Times, 3/5/24; NPR, 3/5/24]
      • CFPB: An estimated 45 million Americans who incur late fees will save an average of $220 each year — a total savings of $10 billion annually — by capping credit card late fees. “For over a decade, credit card giants have been exploiting a loophole to harvest billions of dollars in junk fees from American consumers,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said of the bureau’s move to cap late fees. “Today's rule ends the era of big credit card companies hiding behind the excuse of inflation when they hike fees on borrowers and boost their own bottom lines.” The bureau's press release stated that the rule applies “to the largest credit card issuers, those with more than 1 million open accounts," which “account for more than 95% of total outstanding credit card balances.” [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 3/5/24]

      • A February 2023 poll found “overwhelming bipartisan support” for capping credit card late fees to $8. According to the poll conducted by progressive research group Navigator, 79% of registered voters supported the Biden administration “lowering the limit credit card companies can charge per late fee from $41 to $8.” Those numbers included 74% of independents and 68% of Republicans. [Navigator, 3/2/23]
      • Potential Trump VP pick Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) is trying to block the rule capping credit card late fees. Bloomberg reported that “Senator Tim Scott, a potential Trump vice presidential pick and the top Republican on the Banking Committee, said Tuesday he would push the Senate to take action to block the new regulation” through a Senate vote via the Congressional Review Act. “It will decrease the availability of credit card products for those who need it most, raise rates for many borrowers who carry a balance but pay on time, and increase the likelihood of late payments across the board,” Scott argued in a public statement. [Bloomberg, 3/5/24]
    • Conservative media responded to Biden's efforts to save Americans money by attacking him and the new CFPB rule
      • Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo repeatedly accused Biden of prioritizing reducing credit card late fees over other issues. On March 5, Bartiromo criticized Biden for “what the president is spending his time doing.” Bartiromo said, “This morning he's [President Biden] talking about late fees, and he's talking about corporate America, and it's companies' fault that people are facing inflation.” The next day, Bartiromo continued this line of attack: “We have so many serious priorities,” she said. “I mean a woman is dead because she was murdered by an illegal migrant in Georgia and now we're talking about late fees.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, 3/5/24, 3/6/24]
      • On Newsmax, conservative economist Peter Morici accused Biden of initiating the cap on late fees as a scheme to buy votes. At first, Morici downplayed the number of Americans the new rule would help, before adding: “Think about who's always paying late fees. They're probably the kind of folks that would vote for Democrats. This is a way of motivating them to go out and vote,” he said. “This administration is now getting desperate looking at the polls, and they're looking at every conceivable way to buy a vote.” Morici later compared the rule to Soviet-era price fixing. “If you want the government setting prices, then let’s resurrect the old Soviet Union," he said. [Newsmax, The National Report, 3/5/24]
      • Outkick host Tomi Lahren: “We have an invasion at our southern border that is costing our country billions, and your sleepy President is going after junk fees. Unbelievable.” [Twitter/X, 3/5/24]
    • WSJ editorial: “The Biden ‘Strike Force’ Is Coming for You.” Instead of blaming credit card companies for charging consumers exorbitant fees, The Wall Street Journal's editorial board characterized the CFPB rule as a “burdensome government regulation,” adding that “such fees have proliferated under Mr. Biden because business costs have increased.” Even though the new rule is expected to save consumers billions, the editorial board concluded that “The Biden Presidency is becoming more expensive for Americans by the day.” [The Wall Street Journal, 3/5/24]
    • Fox's The Five mockingly described the new initiative as Biden’s “shrinkflation” strike force. After The Five co-host Jeanine Pirro opened a segment by criticizing Biden for the new strike force, co-host Dana Perino piled on, saying, “This is a brainless decision.” She added: “The market is the strike force. But if Biden is interested in doing this, you could look at all of the issues that we're talking about in terms of where he is polling badly. Why is there no strike force to go after the border? How about, could we have a strike force to bring home hostages who are being held in Gaza? What about a strike force on fixing COVID learning loss? I mean we could go on and on.” [Fox News, The Five, 3/5/24]
    • Fox's The Story portrayed the Biden administration’s attempt to rein in illegal and unfair price increases as an attempt to “squash capitalism.” “I was reading a piece this morning about how capitalism is the defining characteristic that sets this country apart from all of our enemies,” Fox host Martha MacCallum said. “So if you squash capitalism, you're going to put that into remission.” Fox Business host Brian Brenberg added, “This is the anti-rich, anti-wealth crusade that they're [Democrats are] on.” [Fox News, The Story, 3/5/24]

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    Conspiracy Theorists Defame Religious Charities That Aid Migrants

    Conspiracy Theorists Defame Religious Charities That Aid Migrants

    Right-wing media figures have ramped up their attacks on charities and NGOs that help resettle refugees and assist asylum-seekers as part of a broader campaign to demonize migrants and the Biden administration’s immigration policies. These types of broadsides go back years, but have increased recently as fearmongering about immigration becomes a central plank in Republicans’ 2024 electoral strategy.

    Non-governmental organizations and charities, like Catholic Charities and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, have long assisted the federal government in welcoming refugees and other new arrivals to the United States and easing their transition. At its best, this system facilitates the smooth integration of people into communities ready to accept them, as was the case in mass resettlement of Ukrainian refugees following Russia’s invasion of their country two years ago.

    This largely decentralized system has its weaknesses, though, primarily stemming from a lack of strong coordination at the federal level. Xenophobic and opportunistic politicians have been able to fill that vacuum and manufacture a crisis, exemplified by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to bus tens of thousands of migrants to cities like New York, Chicago, and Denver with the apparent goal of creating a crisis in Democrat-led cities in order to score political points.

    That manufactured crisis has created an opportunity for right-wing media outlets to attack the organizations tasked with helping refugees and asylum-seekers. Recently, some right-wing figures have promoted a conspiracy theory claiming that these NGOs and charities are engaged in what amounts to an extortion racket, fueling migration in the hopes of inflating federal spending on the issue and capturing the additional money.

    In reality, the money that comes from the federal government that these groups spend has been specifically allocated by Congress. Without providing any evidence, right-wing figures make wild assertions that migrant organizations are enriching themselves at the expense of the American public. Todd Bensman, a senior fellow at anti-immigrant think tank the Center for Immigration Studies, has also pushed this myth. (CIS is part of the Tanton network, a constellation of xenophobic organizations funded by John Tanton, whom the Southern Poverty Law Center refers to as “the racist architect of the modern anti-immigrant movement.”)

    In February alone, right-wing figures have attacked charities and NGOs that provide direct services to immigrants over a dozen times. It’s notable that this messaging is largely the same whether it’s coming from fringe sources, like Infowars, or conservative outlets which are ostensibly more respectable, like Fox. The narrative has also appeared on CNN, pushed by a former NYPD officer.

    • On February 1, a correspondent for conspiracy theory site Infowars described a new facility opened by Mission: Border Hope, a Methodist church, as a place where “the migrants are being bussed and processed and then distributed across the country.” The correspondent, Chase Geiser, then said the organization was “one example of sort of a mysterious NGO that’s involved in this giant industry of distributing migrants all across our country." [Infowars, The Alex Jones Show, 2/1/24]
    • The next day, Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade pushed the myth that resettlement organizations are getting rich off of serving migrants. He claimed that “Catholic charities are making a ton of money,” providing migrants with “school supplies” and overcrowding American public schools. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 2/2/24]
    • Former NYPD officer and current CNN analyst John Miller peddled a separate falsehood, blaming a resettlement charity for supposedly helping migrants flee from law enforcement following an altercation in New York City. “Yesterday we learned that they went to a Catholic charity that helps migrants, they got four bus tickets under false names and got on a bus headed for Calexico through St. Louis,” Miller said. All of the suspects later showed up for their court date. [CNN, This Morning, 2/2/24]
    • On the podcast of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, guest Liz Yore said, “The only way that we can do something is to cut off the funding to these NGOs.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 2/2/24]
    • Kilmeade returned to the topic on February 5, claiming, “The other thing that bothers a lot of people is the amount of money that goes to the NGOs, Catholic Charities, and others making a ton.” He repeated that falsehood at least one other time that morning, saying, “Let's talk about the NGOs, Catholic charities. They get huge money to house and provide accommodations to illegal aliens who are trying to get into this country.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 2/5/24; 2/5/24]
      • On The Charlie Kirk Show, former Trump adviser Stephen Miller portrayed social structures to assist new arrivals as nodes in a vast conspiracy. “To understand [immigration], you have to understand the money,” Miller said. “You have to follow the money. You have to follow the NGOs. You have to follow the corporations. You have to follow the Chamber of Commerce. You have to follow all the people who profit off of unchecked immigration.” [Salem Media Group, The Charlie Kirk Show, 2/5/24]
      • Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, referred to “funding for NGOs” as a “poison pill” that should be removed from a border militarization bill that was already a wishlist of right-wing priorities. [Fox News, America Reports, 2/7/24]
      • Charlie Kirk suggested that liberal philanthropist George Soros was personally shaking down Arizona for supposed resettlement funding it had received from the federal government. “Makes you wonder, what is George Soros doing in Arizona if it's true, and sounds like it was,” Kirk said. “Maybe he's, you know, meeting with a lot of the NGOs that he's funding on the border. Maybe he's getting an update about pouring money into the state.” [Salem Media Group, The Charlie Kirk Show,2/12/24]
      • On War Room, guest Jackie Toboroff baselessly suggested resettlement organizations were arming migrants. “We don't even know where they're getting their weapons,” Toboroff said, referring to migrants. “Are our politicians giving them to these illegal aliens? Is it the NGOs?” Toboroff did not cite any evidence to back up the claim that migrants are “sitting on stockpiles of weapons and drugs.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 2/13/24]
      • Blogger Peachy Keenan said on Fox News, “Catholic charities spend billions of dollars, taxpayer money that the federal government gives them, to fly people over to Central America and sort of get them into this country, and they set them up. And we are paying for it.” [Fox News, Fox News at Night, 2/21/24]
      • On War Room, Bannon said in reference to the refugee resettlement organization HIAS: “They got the Hebrew group that used to get the poor Jews out of the Russia with the pogroms, and Poland with the pogroms, and now they're there to exacerbate the invasion on our southern border.” Bannon then said, “These NGOs are demons” and “anti-American.” [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 2/26/24]
      • Retired NYPD officer and Fox News contributor Paul Mauro echoed the line Bensman and others had pushed. “If you look down deep enough, the NGOs and the faith-based institutions that are running the buses and running the sponsorships, they can't let this go because the money is coming from the American taxpayer,” Mauro said. [Fox News, America Reports, 2/26/24]
      • Fox News’ Rachel Campos-Duffy similarly cast resettlement groups as malevolent actors in a broader conspiracy. “They are part of the journey all the way into Latin America, all the way into where they fly everyone out into the cities,” Campos-Duff said. She added: “[NGOs] sound like they’re a charity because they’re associated with Catholic relief services or Lutheran relief services. But the real way to understand them is to see them as a shadow government, a shadow bureaucracy, even a shadow political party, they are able to operate in secrecy and do what the government can’t do with no oversight.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 2/27/24]

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.