This is in response to Max Morgan’s letter on Sept. 3, “The Truth on Tax Cuts, Medicare.” A common practice by Donald Trump and his blindly supportive minions is to lie boldly because people will see the lie and celebrate with little notice given to the lie being called out. If you watch FOX news, you will likely never see a Trump lie challenged. FOX will cover the lies while other networks fact check and refute the lies – but the FOX minions will only hear the lies — and that’s how lies become the truth.
Anyway, on to Max’s letter. He claims that the tax cuts target and benefit the middle class just as Trump claims and that the left is crazy to dispute this. Remember when Trump said that he would personally suffer under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act? The same Brookings Institute that Max cited (if you care to actually read the analysis) makes this summary: “About 80% of taxpayers did receive a direct tax cut from TCJA, but that is not the end of the story. Tax cuts eventually have to be paid for. When Donald Trump said he was giving Americans a tax cut for Christmas, for example, he neglected to add that they (or their children) eventually would receive the bill. It is unclear how TCJA will eventually be financed, but in the most likely scenarios, most households will end up worse off than had the TCJA never passed. In short, TCJA likely made the current generation of high-income households better off at the expense of lower-income households and future generations.”
Since that analysis was published, the trade wars are wearing on the economy and the GDP has not zoomed as promised and deficits continue to set records over a trillion dollars annually. A starved government hits the poorest among us the hardest. The loss of the individual mandate (a component of TCJA) threw millions out of health care. And remember – the TCJA is designed to fade away in 10 years for individual taxpayers while the corporate tax welfare gift remains permanent.
Duane Mooring
Castaic
