Once Upon A Time

Once upon a time candidate Trump said he wanted to raise taxes on the extremely wealthy, lower taxes on the middle class, and not raise the deficit. Of course the conservative base loved the idea, especially the blue collar workers who thought they had been left behind by elitism. Unfortunately that did not happen.

Last week Republicans, including fiscal hawks like Rand Paul and others, voted to decrease taxes for corporations, pass through businesses and increase the deficit by over $1.4 trillion. They are offsetting the true cost of those cuts though by eliminating deductions for dependents, state and local taxes and reduce the mortgage deduction cap all but the latter are used by almost every middle income family, so families with more than one or two children will likely end up paying more for taxes, and property owners will not be able to deduct the taxes paid locally and state income taxes from their federal taxes. In essence it will cost some middle income families more in order to pay for corporate tax cuts.

The argument of course is that those corporations will pay more in salaries, and invest in development and so on. The problem was of course highlighted by Trump’s own economic adviser asking a room full of executives if they planned on raising salaries and reinvesting tax cuts. Almost no one raised their hand. He was of course genuinely shocked, but that is of course the rub. Companies already have massive surpluses of cash. As of May 2, 2017, CNN had reported Apple had stashed a quarter trillion dollars in cash. The intent of that money is to appease investors and remain strong financially. Every company is hedging their bets to do the same thing with money saved from tax cuts. In essence all that money saved will likely go back to investors or be saved for financial security. In other words it will not “trickle down” to the average family, but I digress.

If thats not upsetting enough the tax cuts for every day Americans will expire over the next ten years, while corporate rates will stay the same and estate taxes will expire entirely. Meaning the middle class could get double forgotten by 2025, and for those people who argue that the taxes will be extended in 2025 those same politicians also said a government shut down wouldn’t happen, and low and behold it did. In reality tax reform may have been needed, but the manner in which it was delivered, the people it neglects and the families it leaves behind, and where it placed its priorities seemed holistically backwards and sided dramatically in the favor of the wealthy. While neglecting the middle class.

The last problem is that the same Republicans who decreed the debt and deficit as the, “largest national security threat to the United States” just added to the deficit; seemingly, they did this to appease wealthy businesses and individuals at the expense of their primary priority over the last year. If there is one thing I can’t stand its a hypocrite who abandons all principal for the sake of political expediency. The only person with any integrity in this process was Sen. Bob Corker, and even he almost fell for the shell game played in D.C. last week. Hopefully, a conference will slow this process down, and we will be able to evaluate the true effects of this legislation and find some true reform with real solutions for real Americans, but only time will tell. One thing is certain it is unlikely the benefit of this legislation will be felt before the 2018 midterm elections in which case Republicans had better hope for a victory to overshadow the last year of Republican control.