Liz and left lying about GOP bill loot
Media helps Dems make off with tax reform facts
“Unbelievable. GOP just pulled off the biggest bank heist in US history & they’re delivering the loot – >$1 trillion out of our national treasury – to the wealthiest Americans & big corporations.”
— U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), on Twitter.
“Unbelievable” is right, as in, if you know anything about taxes, math, America etc, it is literally impossible to believe the idiotic claims liberals like Merkley are making.
And, unbelievably, the media have found a way to shock even me with the level of bovine effluvia they’ve poured out over the GOP tax plan.
Of course, U.S. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi calls a cut in the corporate tax rate (something that radical right-winger Barack Obama supported) “Armageddon.” Of course, people like Merkley and U.S. Sen. Liz Warren (D-The Politburo) call letting you keep your own money a “heist.” I expect this nitwittery from the ideology-addled.
But for some reason I’m still naïve enough to expect reporters to do basic reporting and call them out on it. Why am I so dumb? Particularly when the Associated Press runs headlines like “House passes first rewrite of nation’s tax laws in three decades, providing steep tax cuts for businesses, the wealthy.”
This is the equivalent of “As Titanic Sinks, Millionaires Exploit Lifeboats To Save Themselves.” Technically true, but misleading and misses most of the real story.
And say what you want, but the misleading media get results: A misinformed public. The liberal Brookings Institution admits that more than 80 percent of households are getting a tax cut next year (an average decrease of $2,140), but in the latest NBC/WSJ poll only 17 percent know it. Shouldn’t journalists be embarrassed by these results? Alas, the media are dominated by Democrats who loathe Trump, love the left and don’t let the details get in the way. So here are some facts, because somebody has to do it:
The Middle Class Gets The Biggest Cut:
While the GOP bill reduces the tax burden of every group of Americans, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation finds the largest cut goes to the lowest income groups. For example, currently filers earning $40,000 to $50,000 pay almost $12 billion in federal income taxes. The GOP plan cuts that number by $6.7 billion — a 56 percent drop in their tax burden. Meanwhile, those evil “millionaires and billionaires” the media claim just committed Grand Theft Taxpayer are only getting a 6.4 percent drop in their share of the tax bill. If this really is a “heist,” America’s millionaires are the most incompetent crooks since the “Wet Bandits” tried to rob Macaulay Culkin’s house on Christmas Eve.
No, The Middle Class Is Not Getting A Tax Hike:
Warren said it again during the final Senate floor debate: “This bill ultimately raises taxes on 60 percent of working families.” Uh, no.
What’s really happening is that the individual tax cuts have a 10-year lifespan because of the rules the GOP had to follow to pass the bill with 51 votes. So the claim that “middle-class taxes will go up” is only true if you admit up front that middle-class taxes are going down in the first place.
The Rich Pay More Today, And They Will Pay Even More Tomorrow:
The biggest lie the media let slip by is the claim that this bill is a “heist that takes millions from the middle class and hands it over to the wealthy,” as Warren puts it. How is that not the lie of the year, Politifact? In addition to the middle class paying less, I challenge Warren to provide the name of a single middle-class taxpayer who will have a single tax dollar taken from them and handed to a millionaire.
There are 300 million people in the U.S., Liz: Name one.
She can’t, of course, because the rich aren’t “getting” anything. Like everyone else, they’re just being allowed to keep more of their own stuff.
Here’s the bottom line: Today, the top 20 percent of income earners pay almost all the federal income taxes, while the poor pay zero. Tomorrow? It will be the same, only more so. And thanks to the media, most people still won’t know it.