Here's what "the party of the working class" intends to do to the tax system:
Republicans in Congress are preparing to not just extend former president Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts if they win control of Washington in November’s elections, but also lower rates even more for corporations....
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) lowered rates for individuals of nearly all income levels, though it cut taxes most for the highest earners, and slashed the maximum corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. The individual portions of that law expire in 2025, but Republicans who wrote the law made the business tax cuts permanent.
Now GOP lawmakers and some of Trump’s economic advisers are considering more corporate tax breaks — which could expand the national debt by roughly $1 trillion over the next decade, according to researchers at Stanford University and MIT....
That $1 trillion is in addition to the cost of extending the 2017 tax cuts. Brookings says:
An important effect of extending the 2017 tax cuts is that it’s estimated to cost an extra $3.8 trillion over the next decade. Without significantly cutting services, the federal debt would balloon to 211% of GDP by 2054, compared to about 100% of GDP right now.
But don't worry, fellow elderly people! We're told that the programs you rely on are safe:
... the Trump campaign has ruled out cuts to the Defense Department, as well as to Social Security and Medicare, programs for the elderly that are the main drivers of the nation’s rising spending. The debt grew by more than $7 trillion during Trump’s administration.
I genuinely believe that Trump intends to reject Social Security and Medicare cuts in a second term -- it's a popular promise, it's easy for him to understand, people have probably told him that he succeeded in the 2016 election where folks like Mitt Romney and John McCain failed because he made the promise -- and, of course, he's a guy who loves getting personal benefits from borrowed money.
Republicans want to push America into a debt crisis -- a real one, not the phony one they declare every time there's a Democratic president -- so they can achieve their decades-old dream of gutting Social Security and Medicare. Trump might be our president the next four years, and he might do so much damage to the system that he's allowed to be president after that, possibly for life, but he has to die someday. When he does, Medicare and Social Security are in the crosshairs.
They might be in the crosshairs very soon, if Trump wins and then dies in office, and President Burgum or President Rubio or whichever Koch errand boy Trump chooses as his running mate ascends to the presidency. Or maybe the GOP will wait until a Democrat is in the White House again, assuming that ever happens, so they can yell and scream and blame the Democrat for risking the fiscal solvency of America by refusing to slash these programs. (Tax increases on well-off people will, of course, be off the table.) It's going to get ugly. Trump could someday be known as one of the murderers of these programs, even if he never cuts a dime from them.
Published with permission from No More Mister Nice Blog
