It appears that President Trump will be signing a tax reform measure before Christmas. It will be billed by Trump supporters as the biggest triumph of his Presidency.
In actuality, it will be akin to ex-President George W. Bush’s premature “Mission Accomplished” celebration on the aircraft carrier in 2003. That was supposed to be the end of our military troop involvement in Iraq. It’s now 2017, and we’re still over there. What he really accomplished was immersing America in a tar pit, to the absolute glee of the Defense industry.
The tax package that the GOP has put together throws a proverbial bone to the folks who cast ballots for President Trump, but, at the same time, opens the bank vault for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans who fund Republican politics.
The rationale for this giveaway is the hackneyed “Trickle Down” economic philosophy which has never worked in the past, despite numerous efforts by the GOP at the state and Federal level.
Let’s all hope it works… for the first time.
What will happen for sure is that the Federal government will have less money with which to fund its operations. According to economists, this tax plan will increase the National Debt by $1.5 trillion over ten years. Since the Federal budget must first address it’s debt obligations, and, politically, Defense and Social Security are not going to take a hit, something’s going to have to give. Most likely it will be “safety net” programs for the Nation’s most needy citizens.
You may not currently be one of those unlucky people, but you will soon begin to know more of them, or see them on the streets. Hopefully, you won’t be joining them.
Since cost trimming will be required under this tax plan, when the bogus revenue projections come up short, it will give President Trump and his industry cheerleaders more excuse to call for reduced expenses in Federal oversight agencies.
Despite all the populist rhetoric on the campaign trail, about helping out blue collar America, de-fanging the regulatory agencies is what this election was all about. It is no accident that President Trump has already put industry folks in charge of these watchdog agencies…to make sure that staff is looking the other way. Oil industry guys are now running the Energy Department, investment bankers are now running the Treasury Department and the SEC, anti-environmentalists are in charge of the Department of the Interior, an ex-Verizon attorney is now FCC Chairman (and is dismantling “net neutrality” on the Internet), etc. The list goes on, and “the fix” is in.
This will be Trump’s real legacy…the dismantling of the Federal government in an effort to allow business to do whatever it damn well wants to do. As if that’s a good thing.
Folks, we’ve been down that path before, and it’s why government had to get bigger…because of abominable abuses by greedy men.
By the turn of the 19th Century, most of the wealth of this Nation was held by a tight circle of men, and these fellows, known by the public as the Robber Barons, ran roughshod over the lands and people of this country in pursuit of fantastic wealth.
Forests were stripped, mining gouged the earth and created hazardous waste lakes, farmers used pesticides that poisoned future generations, sweatshops were introduced, labor was exploited, unsafe working conditions were rampant, etc. These wealthy tycoons owned the government and they got insanely rich.
It took Progressive government in the early 1900’s by leaders such as Theodore Roosevelt to rein in industry excesses.
Does anyone remember the stock market crash in 2007 that led to the Great Recession…that we barely survived. It cost our nation $15 trillion, and was caused by the banking industry, Wall Street, the ratings agencies, and specialty insurance corporations playing footsie with the Nation’s savings.
The American public paid the tab for that fiasco: lost retirement savings, lost jobs, lost homes; and, more tax money to pay for the “bailout” of the banks who had been so frivolous with the public’s money.
It wasn’t the first time that Americans had experienced the rug being pulled out from under them: there were the turn of the 19th century bank panics; the Stock Market Crash of 1929; the savings and loan crisis of 1989; and, others. Each time, regulatory measures were put in place to discourage risky speculation and foolhardy, self-serving actions by greedy banks and Wall Street con men.
Who benefited from these regulations? Ordinary people, the one’s who grow the food, build things, teach our children, and try to save money for retirement; i.e the blue-collar Americans who trust our government to protect them from unscrupulous, greedy bastards.
Attention! While you were looking one way, the Trump Administration and the GOP has been dismantling governmental oversight of the banking industry and Wall Street. It’s “Open Season” again for subterfuge and chicanery.
It’s becoming obvious that the Trump/GOP vision is that “No government is better than big government”, and that “Greed is good”, particularly if you are lucky enough to belong to the Club (i.e. the wealthiest 1 percent). In other words, we’ve moved from a democracy to a plutocracy…in just one year.
The hell of this is that the blue-collar folks who fell for Trump’s flim-flam have no idea that they’ve been conned and will reap none of the bounty as America is “made great again”.
That’s Donald Trump’s inside joke: “again” refers to the Gilded Age, when guys like Rockefeller, Carnegie, Clark, Vanderbilt, Huntington, Gould, Mellon, Morgan, etc. had their way with America…the public be damned.
Billionaire Donald Trump, the guy who hasn’t paid taxes in years and won’t let anyone look at his tax return, aspires to be one of those selfish titans, and, by God, it appears that the doofus American electorate is greasing the skids for the Trump family and its Wall Street buddies.
Nicely played, Mr. Trump.
