Because Democrats and Trump Haters have nothing else to run on, in her latest bi-weekly (Aug. 28) diatribe Lois Eisenberg replays the same, tired, unfounded-in-facts, liberal talking points that the Trump/Republican tax cuts only benefited “their billionaire donors” and that Trump’s proposed Medicare cuts will only hurt “the most vulnerable” among us. Facts matter. Here’s the reality:
According to the Brookings Institution* (usually politically neutral), 80% of all American taxpayers benefited from Trump’s 2018 tax cuts. Admittedly, and also according to Brookings, 21% of those cuts did go to the highest-income earners; however, the VAST MAJORITY of the tax cuts went to middle- and lower-income taxpayers. It should also be noted that those same high-income individuals pay the most taxes and are the same people who start or expand businesses, create new jobs, expand productivity and hire workers.
Thanks to Trump’s tax cuts and the business expansion and the new jobs that created, U.S. unemployment is now at a 50-year low and, the unemployment rate among black and Hispanic Americans is the LOWEST ever. Real wages for the middle class have also gone up for the first time in a decade or longer. They’ve gone up the highest for low-income workers. So much for hurting low-income people, as Ms. Eisenberg would lead us to believe.
As for Ms. Eisenberg’s assertion that the evil Republicans/Trump want to drastically cut Medicare benefits, 85% of the proposed cuts, again per the independent Brookings Institute, will come from what Medicare pays to providers with very little impact on individual recipients. Trump is actually proposing pretty much the same changes that Barack Obama proposed ($420 billion over 10 years) in Obama’s last budget. That’s the reality, not unsupported wild assertions from the left that Republicans and Donald Trump are hellbent on gutting Medicare.
As for Social Security cuts, when Social Security passed in the mid-1930s the average American only lived to their 50’s for men and early 60’s for women. Life expectancy now is in the late 70’s for men and mid-80’s for women. The old actuarial tables no longer work. If major changes are not made to the current Social Security system, it will go bankrupt, which will hurt all of us, not just the most vulnerable among us.
Max Morgan
Valencia
