GRASPING AT STRAWS

| 3:00 pm EST December 23, 2019
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Desperately looking for something good to use in his 2020 reelection campaign, “president” Donald Trump is looking to his tax cuts for the answer. Unfortunately for him, he’s one of the very few who view these tax cuts as a positive. Corporate giants Netflix and Amazon, along with 58 others, paid zero taxes on over $79 billion in profits according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (“ITEP”). They love Trump’s tax cuts. For regular people like you and me, however, it’s a different story.

Since being signed into law, Trump’s tax law “has not become a runaway hit with the public,” says the Hill. People who say they see a tax break are either delusional or lying, as most working people saw nothing or had to pay more. The corporate tax was lowered from 35% to 21%, but these companies managed to finagle their way out of paying anything. Zero, nada, zilch, absolutely nothing. Had they paid, the federal government would have collected $16.4 billion. Not only did they not pay, but ITEP reports that they received $4.3 billion in rebates. For what? Being good cheats? Now, who do you suppose they expect to make up that deficit? That’s right: you and me, our children, our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren. Yet, many of these people who will have to pay are the same ones claiming that Trump is the “best president” they have ever seen. Some people are just idiots, and there’s nothing you can do for them except vote Trump out of office and help them save the money they claim not to need.

Those of us who are paying attention and know we’re being robbed one way or another are attracted to the Democrats’ promise to roll back this ridiculous tax law by raising taxes on the wealthy. “We have to eliminate [a] significant number of these god-awful tax cuts that were given to the very wealthy,” Joe Biden pledged during the last debate. Don’t forget the corporations, Joe. These companies are pocketing literally billions of dollars, and those dollars are not being returned to the economy via new jobs or anything else. They’re going right into the CEOs’ pockets. The Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center also showed where these tax cuts went: to people whose income is between $308,000 and $733,000. While Republicans tried to snow the American public by claiming workers would see increases in their take-home pay, their own national committee’s poll showed that most voters saw through the ploy and firmly believed that these tax cuts benefitted only the wealthy and corporations. The Hill reports that this belief is behind the blue wave in 2018. Hopefully, we can ride that wave into 2020 because nothing is going to change.

People who claim to be doing better following Trump’s tax cut for the rich and corporations apparently don’t mind paying taxes for people and corporations who can obviously afford to pay. Instead, the onus for keeping the government funded continues to fall on those who can least afford it. This is what Trump is claiming as his 2020 leverage. If this is his best accomplishment, he is truly grasping for straws.