Tag: GOP tax cut for the rich

New report reignites push for wealth tax

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A blockbuster ProPublica report on the taxes paid by the richest Americans is reigniting a push from progressives for a wealth tax.

The report, based on tax-return data ProPublica received from an anonymous source, details how prominent billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk have paid little to no taxes in some recent years, particularly when compared to their wealth gains.

The article comes as President Biden has proposed raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations to pay for his major spending proposals. Democrats have increasingly made raising taxes on the rich a top priority in recent years, and some progressives have called for going even further than Biden’s proposals by establishing a wealth tax that would impose taxes on net worth rather than income. Continue reading.

Economist Paul Krugman explains why Trump’s corporate tax cuts were a ‘dismal failure’

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President Joe Biden has proposed a corporate tax hike as a way to pay for his ambitious infrastructure plan, and some Republicans are objecting vehemently — insisting that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was a raging success. But liberal economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman disagrees, slamming the Trump-era GOP tax cuts as a “dismal failure” in a Twitter thread posted on April 5.

Passed when Donald Trump was president and Republicans controlled both branches of Congress, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act lowered the United States’ corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% — and Biden has proposed increasing it to 28%. Many Democrats have emphasized that the Republican tax cuts of late 2017 did precious little for the American middle class and greatly increased the federal deficit.

Krugman, in his Twitter thread, writes, “I’ve been a bit surprised to see some Republicans opposing Biden’s plans by claiming that the Trump tax cut for corporations was a big success. I thought they’d gone into hiding given its dismal failure.” Continue reading.

Democrats demand repeal of ‘obscene’ tax cut for millionaires that GOP buried in previous COVID relief bill

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A group of 120 Democratic members of Congress is calling on their party’s leadership to ensure that a tax break for millionaires that Republicans quietly buried in an earlier coronavirus relief package is repealed in upcoming aid legislation, arguing the rollback would free up hundreds of billions in revenue which could be used to help struggling families.

Led by Reps. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) in the House and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) in the Senate, the coalition of lawmakers sent a letter to Democratic leaders on Tuesday demanding the reversal of “costly tax breaks for so-called ‘net operating losses’ that Republicans tucked into the CARES Act,” a $2 trillion relief measure that former President Donald Trump signed into law last March.

“These special-interest giveaways will confer over 80 percent of the benefits to just 43,000 taxpayers, each earning at least $1 million per year,” reads the letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “We urge you to repeal these unwarranted tax cuts, as HEROES and HEROES 2.0 proposed and President Biden has recommended. This would save over $250 billion, which should be repurposed to help Americans who have lost income due to the pandemic and its economic fallout.” Continue reading.

The rich are getting richer and everyone else is getting poorer. That is exactly the plan

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The reason everybody is so angst-ridden about the economy is because we all have the wrong idea about what it is supposed to do and how it’s supposed to work. 

Most of us have a quaint, 19th century idea about free markets and all that up-by-the-bootstraps Horatio Alger stuff. You know, work hard, play by the rules, keep your nose clean, and you’ll do well. That is certainly the cultural myth our society bathes us in.

But that’s not how things actually work. It’s the dissonance between how we imagine things work and how they really work that causes our perplexity and angst, and rage. It is also that dissonance that has been so deftly manipulated by Donald Trump and given rise to Trumpism. Continue reading.

Club for Growth launches anti-Biden ad blitz

The conservative group will spend $5 million on ads across three battleground states next week.

The anti-tax Club for Growth is launching a multimillion dollar ad campaign going after Joe Biden, as Republicans find themselves overwhelmed by liberal outside groups in the presidential race.

The conservative organization is preparing a $5 million advertising campaign attacking the former vice president for opposing school choice. Officials with the group say the investment could grow in the weeks to come. The commercials will start on Monday and air for a week in three key swing states: Arizona, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

President Donald Trump has been swamped by liberal outside groups in recent weeks. According to outside spending data tallied by the Center for Responsive Politics, pro-Biden groups have outspent their conservative counterparts more than two to one, $91.2 million to $44.7 million. The White House-sanctioned pro-Trump super PAC, America First Action, has also been outraised and outspent by its main Democratic counterpart, Priorities USA Action. Continue reading.

Washington’s recession-fighting toolbox is nearly empty as US economy braces for possible coronavirus outbreak

Investors, policymakers, businesses and the general public are increasingly concerned the coronavirus’ rapid spread will lead to a recession. While this outcome is hard for economists like me to predict, we do know one thing: The U.S. is not prepared to fight a deep recession.

Policymakers basically have two methods for reversing a downturn: monetary stimulus, primarily through reduced borrowing costs; and fiscal stimulus, when the government spends more or cuts taxes.

Unfortunately, the U.S. currently has dim prospects for success with either option. Continue reading.

Deficit spikes 25 percent through January

The Hill logoThe federal deficit through January climbed to $389 billion, a 25 percent spike over the same period last year, according to Treasury Department data released Wednesday.

The Treasury estimates the deficit will surpass $1 trillion this year for the first time since 2012.

Overall receipts were down since last year by $68 billion, largely due to a drop in individual corporate taxes. Spending, in the meantime, was up $147 billion, as outlays spiked on defense, health, veterans affairs and Social Security. Continue reading.

Expert: US corporate tax receipts lower than all but Latvia

Ways and Means heard from a Harvard professor on how corporate tax revenues dropped after the 2017 tax overhaul

After GOP lawmakers and the Trump administration slashed the corporate income tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent two years ago, corporate tax revenue as a share of gross domestic product is lower in the United States than any of 30 developed countries — with the exception of Latvia.

That’s the conclusion of Jason Furman, a Harvard University economics professor who testified before the House Ways and Means Committee Tuesday. “Corporate revenue collections are very low” both historically and compared to other advanced economies, said Furman, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama.

While there are estimates that corporate tax collections will grow slightly as a percentage of GDP in coming years, that likelihood will evaporate if business provisions in the 2017 tax law are made permanent, Furman added, chiefly those allowing more generous equipment expensing. Continue reading.

Deficit widens, economic growth slows in new CBO outlook

Repeal of health care taxes the largest driver of 10-year deficit increase, according to projections

The Congressional Budget Office projects higher deficits for this year and the coming decade, with a fiscal 2020 deficit of $1.015 trillion — $8 billion higher than the agency estimated last August.

The fiscal 2019 deficit was $984 billion, by comparison.

Over the next decade, the cumulative deficit outlined in the agency’s latest budget and economic outlook released Tuesday is estimated at $12.4 trillion, $160 billion more than the earlier projection. Continue reading.

Trump Opens Door to Cuts to Medicare and Other Entitlement Programs

New York Times logoThe president signaled a willingness to scale back Medicare, a shift from his 2016 platform of protecting entitlement programs.

WASHINGTON — President Trump suggested on Wednesday that he would be willing to consider cuts to social safety-net programs like Medicare to reduce the federal deficit if he wins a second term, an apparent shift from his 2016 campaign promise to protect funding for such entitlements.

The president made the comments on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Despite promises to reduce the federal budget deficit, it has ballooned under Mr. Trump’s watch as a result of sweeping tax cuts and additional government spending.

Asked in an interview with CNBC if cuts to entitlements would ever be on his plate, Mr. Trump answered yes. Continue reading.

NOTE:  We noted back with the passage of the Trump/GOP tax cut for the rich, that we’d be seeing this happen “because of the national debt” which has ballooned due to less taxes on corporations (many pay nothing) and the richest of the rich.