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Trump Just Tried To Screw The Middle Class. The NY Times’ Response Is Perfect

Trump Just Tried To Screw The Middle Class. The NY Times’ Response Is Perfect

Yesterday, President Trump and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin made a huge show out of releasing their plans for the “biggest tax cut in history,” promising “massive” help for the middle class.

But the one-page document they presented to the American made it clear that all that talk was just a smokescreen to hide Trump’s true intentions – to make sure he and his billionaire buddies never have to pay taxes again.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof skewered Trump’s tax plan in a brutal op-ed published today which sums the situation up perfectly: “This Isn’t Tax Policy; It’s a Trump-Led Heist.”

Trump’s new tax “plan” (more like an extremely vague plan for a plan) is an irresponsible, shameless, budget-busting gift to zillionaires like himself.

This isn’t about “jobs,” as the White House claims. If it were, it might cut employment taxes, which genuinely do discourage hiring. Rather, it’s about huge payouts to the wealthiest Americans — and deficits be damned! If Republicans embrace this “plan” after all their hand-wringing about deficits and debt, we should build a Grand Monument to Hypocrisy in their honor.

President Trump’s tax plan is specifically designed to eliminate what little tax he already does pay. His released 2005 tax return shows that the paid $31 million through the AMT tax, which is one of the taxes that just so happened to be specifically targeted for elimination.

Kristof goes on to call out Trump for trying to spin the same old widely-debunked voodoo economic claptrap that Republicans have been pushing for three decades now and betraying his promise to defend and uplift the American middle class.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says Trump’s tax “plan” would be paid for partly “with growth” — which means that he has no idea how to pay for it.

Effectively, we’d borrow from China or other countries to finance huge tax breaks for Trump and his minions. And this is populism?

This is the very opposite of “populism.” Trump’s “tax plan” is nothing less than an act of class warfare by the ultrawealthy elites.

Trump and his band of pillaging plutocrats would deprive our nation of its future by exploding the deficit by seven trillion dollars in the first decade, money that will sit in the bank vaults of the oligarchs collecting dust instead of being spent to repair our nation’s failing infrastructure, care for the most vulnerable in our population, and cultivate a vibrant and diverse civil society.

When asked how this will help the middle class, Secretary Mnuchin had no answers.

And once again, the American middle class will have to pay for it, just like we had to pay to bail out the oligarch class when they crashed the stock market and caused the Great Recession.

Trump’s shamelessly avaricious intent grimly illustrates the arrogance with which the wealthy elites wield their power in the United States,  knowing they are insulated from consequence by their millions and content to plunge the rest of us into poverty.

The people of America must mobilize and send a shockwave during the 2018 midterms warning Trump and his cronies this kind of naked plutocracy will not be tolerated in a free republic.

Read the full article here.

Colin Taylor
Opinion columnist and former editor-in-chief of Occupy Democrats. He graduated from Bennington College with a Bachelor's degree in history and political science. He now focuses on advancing the cause of social justice and equality in America.

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