The tax bill he and his Republican comrades are pushing through Congress was drafted behind closed doors, with no hearings and no input from Democrats.
Paulsen, Trump and the other Republicans have forgotten that trickle-down economics have not worked in the past and certainly did not work in the 1980s when Reagan foisted them upon the country. Reagan’s own budget director, David Stockman, even authored a book admitting they do not work. Continue reading “Letter: Trickle-down doesn’t work”
The following article by Heather Long was posted on the Washington Post website November 5, 2017:
House Republican leaders on Nov. 2 proposed legislation that would overhaul the U.S. tax code. Here’s what you need to know about it. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
More than 3,000 Americans would not have to pay the estate tax next year if the Republican tax bill is passed, a 64 percent reduction from the 5,000 people who would pay under current law, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation — one of the most glaring ways the proposed legislation benefits a small number of wealthy Americans.
Under current law, Americans can pass along homes, land, stocks or other assets worth up to $5.49 million without paying any estate or gift tax. Estates worth more than that are subject to a 40 percent tax. The House GOP bill would double the threshold to $11.2 million in 2018 and then do away with the tax entirely in 2024. For 2018, that means an estimated 3,200 people would not have to pay. Continue reading “3,200 wealthy individuals wouldn’t pay estate tax next year under GOP plan”
The following article by Christian E. Weller was posted on the Center for American Progress website October 26, 2017:
This fall’s policy agenda has been dominated by talks about tax cuts, nominally disguised as tax reform. The Trump administration and congressional leaders have so far provided few details, but the existing principles and proposal suggest that the final product will include massive tax cuts for top income earners and corporations. The proposal includes little or no tax relief for middle- and low-income Americans. Proponents argue that the tax cuts will translate into a boost to economic growth because the additional money to the wealthy and corporations will trickle down in the form of more money for investments, as well as lower costs of investments. Greater business investments, the argument goes, will lead to accelerated innovation, which will lead to more jobs and higher living standards.
The arguments in support of supply-side tax cuts do not hold up. Past tax cuts, such as the supply-side tax that heavily favored the wealthy during the 1980s and 2000s, showed neither measurable acceleration of economic growth nor clear improvements for workers. There was also no indication of a worsening economy after taxes on the wealthy increased in the early 1990s and in 2012. (see Table 1) Continue reading “Supply-Side Follies: Wasteful Tax Cuts Will Not Boost the Economy”
The following column was posted on the Roll Call website October 24, 2017:
Tax cuts in Kansas led to an economic train wreck
Kansas Governor Sam Brownback’s tax cuts are a cautionary tale for Washington lawmakers who are hitting the gas to get a tax reform package completed by the end of the year without paying much attention to details, Patricia Murphy writes. (Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
“Economic gold rush? Or fiscal wreck?” That was the question the Kansas City Star asked on May 23, 2012, the day after Gov. Sam Brownback signed a sweeping series of state tax cuts into law. Five years later, the Kansas tax cuts are looking a lot more train wreck than gold rush, with a $900 million deficit and Brownback’s fellow Republicans stepping in to reverse the cuts he pushed.
Kansas also offers an awfully timely cautionary tale for Washington lawmakers, who are hitting the gas on getting a tax reform package — any tax reform package — done by the end of the year in order to chalk at least one win on the board for 2017, but who don’t seem to be sweating the details just yet.
If the 2012 Kansas tax cut package proves anything, it’s that the details are crucial. But so far, the so-bad-even-Republicans-hated-them tax cuts bear a striking resemblance to the framework that the White House and Congressional Republicans seem to be working off of in their attempt to write tax reform legislation.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Sunday wouldn’t guarantee that every middle-class person would get a tax cut under President Trump’s tax reform proposal.
“That’s the purpose of doing this,” Ryan said on CBS’s “Face The Nation.” “The purpose of this is to get a middle-class tax cut.”
The following article by Carolyn Y. Johnson was posted on the Washington Post website September 29, 2017:
The Republican tax plan would deliver a major benefit to the top 1 percent of Americans, according to a new analysis by a leading group of nonpartisan tax experts that challenges the White House’s portrayal of its effects.
President Donald Trump and House Republicans have proposed trillions of dollars in tax cuts, predominantly for high-income individuals and corporations. These tax cuts would come at the expense of middle-class families’ economic security and investments in our economy, such as education, scientific research, and infrastructure. While the administration and House Republicans plan to advance their agenda through Congress this fall, public opinion is crystal clear that the American people do not support the tradeoff between tax cuts for millionaires and economic security for working families.1 Trump and House Republicans are therefore taking a page out of an old playbook: claiming that tax cuts will trickle down to working families in the form of stronger economic growth. But recent history and an abundance of economic research show that trickle-down tax cuts don’t create growth or jobs; they lead only to widening inequality between the top 1 percent of income earners and everyone else.2Continue reading “Trickle-Down Tax Cuts Don’t Create Jobs”
The following article by Faculty Researcher Christopher Jencks was posted on the Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government’s website back in the autumn of 2009. Where we’re hearing the Trump/Goldman-Sachs guys again talking about “tax cuts that pay for themselves,” we thought it would be good to remind people about what happens when this is done by Republican administrations over the decades:
Trickle-down economics — the idea that tax cuts and other financial incentives for companies and individuals in the upper tiers of society fuel growth that indirectly benefits everyone — has been a cornerstone of Republican domestic policy since the Reagan era. This general notion is quite pervasive, however, and didn’t start in the 1980s. The writer and comedian Will Rogers noted that the Hoover Administration was handing out money to the rich in hopes that it would eventually “trickle down to the needy.” The proverb, “a rising tide lifts all boats,” which John F. Kennedy used in a 1963 speech, is sometimes invoked to get across a similar idea — namely, that economic growth will help everyone, regardless of whether he has a 100-foot yacht or a dinghy. Continue reading “Trickle-down Economics Revisited”
