Fox host Dagen McDowell and her band of likeminded tricksters may deserve an Oscar for their performance as Republican tax cut shills but nobody should buy their sales job that the Trump tax cuts will stimulate the economy so much that working and middle class Americans won’t be screwed.
Although even conservative panelist Gary B. Smith later acknowledged that “of course" the proposed tax cuts help the rich the most, McDowell did her best to suggest that it’s a good thing for everyone else. She opened a discussion on the subject today by saying, “The fight for your money is on.”
McDowell sneered about tax-cut critics, “All of a sudden our debt is an issue when it comes to giving America more of their own money back.”
The GOP tax cut effects on the debt could mean drastic cuts to Medicare
McDowell never mentioned how a rising debt could negatively impact Medicare and other social programs. The Washington Post noted that a rule known as “Paygo” “mandates immediate, across-the-board spending reductions to many mandatory programs for any bill that reduces taxes and doesn't fully offset them with revenue increases elsewhere.” Since the Republican plan will “add $1.5 trillion to the debt over the next decade,” the Post explained, “the government would have to make $150 billion in mandatory spending cuts every year for the next 10 years.” In addition to Medicare, the Student Loan Administration and the Military Retirement Fund would also be on the chopping block.
Former Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett credibly alleges in a recent editorial that those cuts are the Republicans' stealth goal. Stealth goal or not, that is precisely what happened in Kansas. Bartlett outlined how Republicans sold Kansans tax cuts as an engine of economic growth that would compensate for any tax shortfalls. When revenue collapsed instead, Republicans slashed university budgets, canceled highway projects and eventually raised the sales tax “which disproportionately hit the pockets of poor and working-class Kansans who had received virtually no tax cut at all.”
PolitiFact likewise says "the evidence is thin" that tax cuts would pay for themselves.
McDowell and four of her five guests echoed the "tax cuts pay for themselves" propaganda while ignoring evidence to the contrary
John Layfield claimed that “in every case” in the last 100 years, Treasury revenue increased. “You do tax cuts right, the economy gets better, and Treasury revenue increases,” he said. (Bartlett persuasively argues that previous tax cuts were made under conditions more favorable for them to work.)
McDowell said to guest Gary B. Smith, "Gary B., we will never claw our way out of these deficits unless we get this economy growing faster than it has been for literally the last decade. We do that through tax cuts."
"Exactly,” Smith agreed. He gave a hint of that stealth goal in his following comments: “Look, this argument that the left is making that somehow tax cuts have to be self-funding is ludicrous. It makes a straw man of saying the government somehow deserves some pile of money. It doesn’t, it’s the people out there who earn the money. If the government then doesn't have enough money, shrink the size of the government."
Smith continued by suggesting that more trips to Starbucks or vacations are better for working folks than Medicare: “The more money you put in people’s pockets that go to Starbucks, or take a trip or do whatever is a lot more efficient than government spending like Solyndra and the TSA … and defense and then the budget is blown to smithereens. It’s a lot more efficient. Let the people have the money they earn.”
And if you don’t earn enough money for health care in your old age or college tuition when you’re young, well, too bad! Have a coffee instead! Smith later said, the government “should be building highways, defending our country and that’s it.”
McDowell continued trying to appeal to her conservative viewers by swiping at Democrats: “The fact that Democrats are now worried about the debt and deficit - I don’t know what church they’re going to but please explain that.” She laughed derisively as she spoke.
Republican pollster Lee Carter called that concern “a great talking point for the Democrats to use to obstruct.” Apparently, she was all on board the “Starbucks, not Medicare” train, too.
Democrat Chuck Rocha, the lone voice of opposition, concisely explained why the tax cuts will not help the middle class. For one thing, corporations don’t really need a tax cut now because they are already flush with cash. "More cash on their books than they've ever had in the history of their corporations." he said. "Why ain’t they already doing that?" he asked, meaning why isn't the extra cash already trickling down? Nobody came up with an answer.
Watch Fox try to help the rich get richer and hide how the poor will probably get poorer below, from the November 18, 2017 Bulls & Bears.
As for the Senate, it’s more than vital that the Dems flip it next year. Every month or so, the Right Wing again floats talk about Anthony Kennedy somehow retiring tomorrow, or posits their hopes about negative things happening to Ruth Bader Ginsburg or Stephen Breyer. It is urgent that we have a Dem majority in the Senate to properly answer any further gargoyle attempts like Gorsuch, and to send Mitch McConnell packing for his vicious behavior over 2016 and 2017, where he decided that it was up to him to steal a Supreme Court seat, and then celebrated with schoolyard high fives on the Senate Floor when he got away with the theft.
Let’s see if the Right Wing gets away with the dangerous game they are playing with this tax transfer attempt. It is entirely possible that they will, but I continue to hope that they will once again trip over their own feet. If that happens, and if Dem voters can actually be bothered to show up in the swing states and elsewhere next November, we can expect a slew of angry pieces on Fox News and AM Radio about how the GOP blew it when they could have had everything they wanted. Frankly, we’re already seeing that kind of coverage – but it will be helpful for that to be a done deal and not just a goad that people like Rush Limbaugh or wannabes like Sean Hannity use to try to bully GOP congresspeople into caving to their whims.
“Somehow, the elite of the Republican party (though they certainly are voting in their OWN self-interest) have managed to convince masses of the working and middle classes to support policies and a whole damned agenda designed to rob themselves blind.”
Sad but VERY, VERY TRUE John. In my honest opinion, here is what is at the root of the Republican Party’s 24/7/365 campaign to continuously brainwash their “sheeple” into voting AGAINST their own self-interests:
RACISM!!
We need to look no further than these infamous words spoken by Lyndon B. Johnson (36th POTUS) in the mid-1960s:
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him someone to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you”
“Certainly shows how deep the derp goes in the brainwashed right when you see them happily cutting off their noses, ears, arms and legs……….”
LMAO! Just like that black knight in the 1974 movie “Monty Python And The Holy Grail” who got his arms and legs severed by King Arthur (played by the late Graham Chapman):
“That?!? That’s just a flesh wound!……..Come back and fight, you chicken!……….”
:^)
The Right Wing tax transfer plan running through the Congress right now is not really a stealth plan. They’re quite open about their intentions. The idea is to give wealthier people (particularly Right Wingers and their donors) a rather large tax cut, while simultaneously punishing residents of Blue States who didn’t vote for the Pence White House by eliminating their state and local tax deductions. And at the same time, the intention is absolutely to trigger the “Pay as you go” rule, so that they can say that their cuts to Medicare and Student Loans weren’t the work of THIS congress but were just a consequence of rules we’ve all agreed to for years, etc. (By the way, they won’t be lowering the amounts to veterans or the military – the cuts will be made to Medicare and to the Student Loan programs. Students looking to borrow money for their education if this thing goes through should be prepared to see far higher interest rates than they already endure – a move intended to discourage poorer students from even thinking about going to college, particularly if it’s a higher tier school.)
It’s also comical to hear angry Right Wingers sneering at Dems somehow trying to “obstruct” this tax transfer. First, it’s silly because the Right Wing did nothing but actually obstruct the Obama White House throughout his 8 years in office, mostly to the detriment of everyone in the country. Secondly, it’s silly because the Dems don’t have much of an ability to obstruct anything at this point. The Right Wing has a solid majority in the House (as we saw in the vote this week) and they’re using reconciliation to make sure that they don’t need a single Dem vote in the Senate for matters like this. The “urgency” they felt about getting an ACA repeal through the Senate wasn’t because they were trying to get something done – it was because they were under a deadline to get away with doing it without a single Dem vote. The same logic will apply to this idea in the Senate – and I note that the Senate version of the tax transfer has slyly included a major plank of ACA repeal just for fun – namely the repeal of the individual mandate for the ACA. (At this point, this is just an act of meanness, since the Pence White House’s abandonment of the subsidies via Executive Order has already pretty much killed the ACA anyway)
The one hope we have now is for the GOP to continue to demonstrate the incompetence and in-fighting they did with the ACA attack they failed over the past several months. If two more Senators join the small GOP opposition to this boondoggle, the tax transfer can be averted.
I note that there is a chance for Jeff Sessions’ seat to switch to Dem next month. If that happens, it would just take a single GOP Senator to stop this. I also note that the GOP’s own viciousness has potentially opened two other seats to Dems (Corker’s and Flake’s), simply because Steve Bannon has indicated he will promote extremist candidates into these seats. If the Dems can stand on their principles next year and push for those seats, they have a chance to spare us any further extremist behavior by the Pence White House, particularly with regard to the Supreme Court. It is important that the Dems work hard to get this done.
Like it or loathe it, the vast majority of folks in a sane-ish democracy vote for their own selfish interests. Social justice, environmental policies, world peace… they all play second fiddle to the effect they expect to see in their wage packet.
Somehow, the elite of the Republican party (though they certainly are voting in their OWN self-interest) have managed to convince masses of the working and middle classes to support policies and a whole damned agenda designed to rob themselves blind.
Perverted ideas of religion, distrust of ‘intellectuals’, seething racial animus and a misguided belief that the fabled American Dream will one day put them on Easy Street… it’s a potent combination that seems to mesmerize weak minded individuals into extreme self-harm.