The Daily Populous Sunday November 10th, 2024 night edition
Authored by rollingstone.com and submitted by Quirkie

President-elect Donald Trump made a lot of promises on the campaign trail when it comes to tax policy, from ending the federal income tax in favor of tariffs to eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits, tips, and overtime pay. But if the past is prologue, there’s only one he’s certain to fulfill: massive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

Let’s review the game tape. When Trump was elected in 2016, economists, policy wonks, and Washington elites frequently criticized his policy agenda as unworkable, unrealistic, and unserious. But he was deadly serious about cutting taxes, and his signature legislative achievement, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, gave corporations a 40 percent discount on their taxes. It also delivered one of the single largest tax cuts for the wealthy in U.S. history, with the richest 0.1 percent of Americans getting a tax cut that was 277 times larger than that of middle-class households. While the bill didn’t live up to its promises of higher pay for workers and increased economic growth, it did line the pockets of shareholders and CEOs, and added $1.9 trillion to the deficit.

Next year, many of the president’s signature tax cuts are slated to expire, teeing up a golden opportunity for him to work with a Republican Congress to go even further. Donald Trump’s rise to power was underwritten by his “billionaire boy’s club,” and he’s made it clear he intends to return the favor with even bigger handouts to the ultra-wealthy. This includes extending individual tax cuts to the richest Americans, further slashing the corporate tax rate to as low as 15 percent, reducing taxes on capital gains, and more. According to Sen. Mike Crapo, the incoming Senate Finance chair, “everything is in play.”

These aren’t policies Trump is trying to secretly pass, either. He’s been loud and proud about wanting to cut taxes for his wealthy friends. He bragged about cutting taxes for the nation’s “highest” earners. He even told his big oil donors, companies who pay some of the lowest effective tax rates in the country, that he would take care of them in exchange for $1 billion in campaign donations. And he won’t be working alone. Major business lobbying groups in Washington like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable have already promised tens of millions of dollars to the cause. Even former Vice President Mike Pence’s dark money group has thrown $10 million into preserving the 2017 tax law. Just to reiterate: Conservatives are so obsessed with cutting taxes for the rich that the former vice president poured millions of dollars into protecting the legacy of a man who wanted him hanged. Editor’s picks

While Democrats will undoubtedly have a lot to fight against during a second Trump term that promises to be even more radical than the first, they must not lose sight of the stakes of next year’s tax battle. Extending the failed Trump tax law would drastically exacerbate income inequality, balloon the deficit, and, perhaps most dangerously, place outsized political power in the hands of the corporations and the ultra-wealthy. For instance, the president-elect has promised to award close ally and mega-funder Elon Musk with a role as “Secretary of Cost Cutting.” For decades the Republican playbook has been a familiar two-step; tax cuts are just part one. Part two comes when they tout their self-inflicted lack of revenue as a reason to cut life-saving programs that families rely on. Musk even admitted that these cuts will “involve some temporary hardship” for Americans — which is rich considering he himself has paid very little or nothing at all in income taxes in recent years.

But Democrats learned an important lesson in 2017 too. Their unified opposition to Trump’s tax cuts drove Trump to his lowest approval rating on record when he signed the bill into law that December and fueled a Blue Wave in the midterms the following year. Democratic leadership must unite the party to stand their ground — and make sure the president-elect and his extreme allies in Congress feel political pain for handing out even more unpopular tax breaks to their ultra-wealthy friends and giant corporations, at the expense of working families. Trending Stories James Van Der Beek Reveals the Colon Cancer Symptoms He Missed Before Diagnosis: 'I Went Into Shock' Dem Insiders Begged Team Harris Not to Campaign With Liz Cheney Republicans Celebrate by Admitting They Can't Wait for Project 2025 The First Order of Trump 2.0? Massive Tax Cuts for His Billionaire Friends

The results of last week’s election, in which working class voters of all stripes swung toward Trump, suggest that they view Democrats as the party of their bosses, not them. We must use next year’s tax fight as a chance to change that perception and start sowing the seeds of buyer’s remorse. Families are still reeling from high costs. Let’s remind them that Trump’s first order of business will be to cut a check to companies who are overcharging them.

Lindsay Owens is the executive director of Groundwork Action.

Tesattaboy on November 9th, 2024 at 17:35 UTC »

Obviously he or America didn't learn from the last Tax cuts ... Increased national debt ... Excellent 👍

Strange_Falcon4928 on November 9th, 2024 at 17:09 UTC »

I’m so excited to pay more taxes when Trump takes office so he can hand it off to his billionaire friends. Can the people who voted for Trump go ahead and pay this difference in taxes for me? Because I didn’t ask for this shit.

Reddit_guard on November 9th, 2024 at 17:05 UTC »

Those taxes will have to go somewhere folks, can you guess who'll pick up the tax burden down the road?