Tag: trickle down

3 Things You Need to Know About Trump’s Tax Plan

The following was posted on the TrumpAccountable.org website October 5, 2017:

The Trump Tax Plan is gaining steam and momentum even as natural disasters and the horrific events of this weekend in Las Vegas have changed the national dialogue. Here are three things you need to be watching on taxes:

Growth Projections and Deficit – In addition to the disastrous outcome of the Kansas/Brownback tax cut disaster, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget argues that there is no way that tax cuts will pay for themselves and that lowering taxes will lead to more deficit spending. “Past tax cuts in 1981 and the early 2000s have led to widening budget deficits and lower revenue, not the reverse as some claim.” Increased deficits represent a significant challenge to the U.S. economy and any tax plans advanced by the Republicans need to help reduce the deficit. Continue reading “3 Things You Need to Know About Trump’s Tax Plan”

White House Floats Aggressive Tax Timetable in Fall

The following article by Lindsey McPherson was posted on the Roll Call website July 31, 2017:

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is helping push the GOP tax overhaul plan. Credit:  Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)

The White House is not wed to having congressional Republicans use the budget reconciliation process to advance a tax overhaul and is eyeing red state Democrats up for re-election as possible partners in the effort, legislative affairs director Marc Short said Monday.

“We’ve learned how difficult it is to thread the needle with 52 [Republican] senators,” Short said at an event hosted by the conservative Americans for Prosperity at the Newseum.

Short outlined an anticipated timetable for putting together a still unwritten tax bill that presumably would not be written including reconciliation instructions, given the description he offered. He said he expects text to be drafted over the August recess and the tax-writing committees to begin markups “right away” when Congress returns after Labor Day. Continue reading “White House Floats Aggressive Tax Timetable in Fall”

Reaganomics Redux, But Worse

The following article by Jeff Madrick was posted on the Washington Spectator website June 5, 2017:

The tax cut proposals first announced by President Donald Trump this April are, simply put, a fraud. They are about greed and politics, not economic growth or true tax reform. The policy has been proved wrong twice already. As a broadly faithful rerun of the Reaganomics of the early 1980s, Trump’s policies, should they be passed, will end as Reagan’s “voodoo economics” did, a failure by virtually any measure. George W. Bush’s sharp tax cuts in the early 2000s also failed to generate a strong economy, one that was driven by speculation rather than strong investment.

Reaganomics was the name given to the self-serving claims of the wealthy that a huge tax cut for them would pay for itself—by creating incentives to invest and work that would lead to renewed economic growth. Tax revenues would simply rise with a growing economy to plug the revenue hole. Some call it trickle-down economics. John Kenneth Galbraith put it scornfully in The Culture of Contentment: if you give a horse enough to eat, some of the kernels will fall to the ground for the sparrows. Continue reading “Reaganomics Redux, But Worse”

It’s Time to Take America’s Billionaire Class Head On

The following article by David Morris was posted on the AlterNet website February 2, 2017:

Combatting defeatism may be our single most important psychological objective in the wake of the election. We need to revive the spirit embodied in Barack Obama’s vague but hopeful campaign slogan in 2008, “Yes We Can.” At the federal level this is a time to expose, to educate and to resist. But at the state and local level we can act proactively to fashion strategies that both embrace progressive values and directly benefit those who mistakenly voted for Donald Trump as an economic savior. This is the first in a series of pieces focusing on what can be done.

The Giveaway

Over the next 6-12 months Congress will almost certainly give the richest 1 percent of the population an income tax gift totaling some $75-150 billion. The 1 percent, with annual incomes averaging $1.3 million, will capture 47 percent of the tax cuts for an average annual tax saving of $214,000 each, the non-partisan Tax Policy Center estimates based on Trump’s proposal, which does not differ dramatically from that of the House Republicans. Continue reading “It’s Time to Take America’s Billionaire Class Head On”