Fox Strains To Justify Trump Extending His Tax Cut For Wealthiest
Larry Kudlow
Fox News personalities have gone all in supporting President Donald Trump’s plan to extend his unpopular 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, offering a hodgepodge of justifications for why it’s necessary to keep taxes low for rich people and businesses as Congress moves to slash billions in social safety net programs.
Fox’s charm offensive comes as congressional Republicans debate the fine points of the looming budget, including how deeply they’ll reduce spending on Medicaid and nutrition assistance programs for working class families to offset the lost tax revenue. The two chambers have passed separate budget outlines, and both have Medicaid and other social safety net programs in their sights.
Extending Trump’s 2017 giveaway to the ultrawealthy
If the Republican Party were a factory, perhaps its only reliably produced widget would be regressive tax legislation. During Trump’s first term, his tax law — the main legislative achievement prior to the COVID-19 pandemic — primarily benefited the wealthy, with the astronomically rich realizing the greatest gains.
According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, the top one percent of taxpayers were expected to pay about $61,000 less in taxes on average as a result of the law, and the top 0.1 percent could expect an average of about $252,000 in tax savings. By contrast, the bottom 60 percent of tax filers were expected to average less than $1,000 in relief — with the bottom 20 percent averaging a paltry $70 in tax savings.
Expert analysis shows that making Trump’s first term tax cuts permanent would exacerbate wealth inequality and mainly benefit the richest people in the United States. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy found that if Congress made the 2017 law permanent “the richest 1 percent of Americans would receive $44.1 billion in tax cuts” as a class, and would benefit from “an average tax cut of nearly $26,000.” As with the 2017 bill, the bottom 60 percent would save about $1,000 or less per year.
Large corporations also laughed all the way to the bank. A separate ITEP report found that Trump’s 2017 cuts meant that the country’s “largest, consistently profitable corporations saw their effective tax rates fall from an average of 22.0 percent to an average of 12.8 percent.” That same group of 296 firms saved a cool $240 billion in taxes from 2018 to 2021 relative to what they would have paid absent Trump’s giveaway.
Now, as Trump’s tariff policies threaten the domestic and international economy, Fox News appears determined to ensure the richest people in the country continue to benefit at the expense of working people.
Fox personalities oppose increasing top tax rates on moral grounds
All signs suggest that the eventual tax policy Trump and congressional Republicans enact will be a boon for the wealthy. Still, several Fox News figures reacted with horror to leaks from the White House that the president was potentially considering an increase in tax rates for top earners. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has been pushing to let the tax cuts expire for those in high-income brackets, and some within the White House have argued in favor of raising taxes on people who take home more than $1 million per year.
That outcome was always exceedingly unlikely — Trump put the notion to bed during a recent Oval Office presser — but even a whiff of progressive taxation was too much for Fox pundits.
On April 15 — Tax Day — Fox Business host and former Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow appeared on Special Report With Bret Baier and offered a familiar argument against raising taxes on the wealthy.
“I thought the Republicans wanted to reward success, not punishing it,” Kudlow said. “This loose talk about a higher top — another new bracket for millionaires — I don’t think it’s a crime to be a millionaire by the way, small businesses would pay this top bracket. I do not understand this.”
“I can't believe Mr. Trump is going to go along with this,” Kudlow added. “He campaigned on, you know, extending his tax cuts.”
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.
- New Data: Rich Got Richer, But Most Americans Fared Worse Under Trump ›
- Trump Tax Cut Saved Billions For Banks That Cut US Jobs ›
- House Gridlock: GOP Factions Spar Over Tax Breaks And Medicare Cutbacks ›
- Divisions Within GOP Are Threatening Trump's Tax Cut Package ›
- 'This Will Kill People': House GOP Guts Medicaid For Billionaire Tax Cut ›
