Merry tax cuts to all; to all a ‘Yeah, right’

NOBODY

turned away Santa Claus yesterday. At least, nobody I know did. So why are so many Americans against the Republican tax plan that was recently signed by

President Trump ( below)? Santa Trump gave American taxpayers a gift that they should have been thrilled and thankful to receive. Yet polls — starting from before the plan was actually passed — show that Americans hated the idea of a tax cut.

Quinnipiac’s poll, for instance, showed that just 25 percent of voters approved the plan. Other surveys — by ABC News and The Washington Post, CNN, Morning Consult and YouGov — put approval only slightly higher. But those were still nowhere near the support that past tax cuts received.

President Reagan’s first tax cut, in 1981, got a 51 percent approval rating. The 2001 tax cut by President George W. Bush got a 49 percent thumbs-up. An extension of the Bush cuts in 2010 got a 54 percent approval rating. Even a tax hike in 1993 by President Clinton got a 34 percent approval rating.

Yet the average approval rating from all the polls for Trump’s tax cut was only 32 percent.

I know why I opposed what the Republicans were doing. With the US already $20 trillion in debt, I think it was unconscionable for Washington to change the tax laws in a way that will increase that debt by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

But I’d be shocked if enough Americans took the long view like I did to bring the approval rating down to an average of just 32 percent.

There are, of course, several explanations for the poll results. The most basic one is that the polls could have been wrong. Pollsters got the results of the last presidential election awfully wrong, so why trust what they say now?

Another reason might be that Americans bought into the idea that this tax cut was disproportionately going to benefit the rich. And it probably will.

That anti-rich argument was mostly a story planted by Democrats and other Trump haters. The people reached by the pollsters could have simply been repeating what they were hearing on news shows and reading in the newspapers.

Now that a number of corporations have been giving out $1,000 bonuses and crediting the tax reform for their largesse, that opinion could change quickly.

But I can think of another reason Americans might have been against the tax cut. And it’s the same reason that kids eventually outgrow their belief in Santa Claus. It’s called cynicism. Maybe we’ve gotten to the point where nothing that Washington does is right. Grown-up Americans don’t believe in Santa, and they don’t believe our politicians can solve our problems.

Let’s hope we will soon grow out of that stage.

Late last week, a top FBI lawyer named James Baker was reassigned. The Washington Post said it was part of FBI Director Christopher Wray’s effort to assemble his own team of senior advisers.

But there’s probably more to it. The FBI has been accused — correctly, I believe — of partisanship, especially when it came to handling the investigation of Hillary

Clinton’s e-mails. As I explained in an October 2016 column, Baker was one of three people who “unanimously” decided not to prosecute Clinton. Then-FBI head James Comey and Deputy Director

Andrew McCabe were the other two at the meeting when the decision was made.

Baker was reassigned shortly after McCabe testified in private before the House Intelligence Committee, which is looking into Clinton’s mishandling of her e-mails. There have also been reports that Baker is being lookedd at as the source of leaks to the press.

I said a long time ago and repeated often that the Democrats should back off their insistence that the events leading up to the 2016 election should be investigated.

Investigators might get Trump on something. But Democrats are also likely to get tangled up in all this — as seems to now be happening.

I’ll say it again: Hillary Clinton should have secured a pardon before

President Obama left the White House. And, in fact, I’m told by a good source that someone did gently broach that subject on her behalf. Americans are on a spending spree. And that’s not necessarily a good sign for the longer-term economy. The Department of Commerce late last week reported that personal income rose only 0.3 percent in November, while personal spending jumped by 0.6 percent. Both numbers were higher than expected. Not surprisingly, the personal savings rate in the US declined — it had to — to just 2.9 percent from 3.2 percent. That was the lowest since November 2007, which was the start of bad times in this country. Also not surprising is the fact that credit card use is surging. The US economy has been growing at an annual rate of around 3 percent for the past few quarters. That probably won’t hold up if the spending/savings numbers continue the way they have been. We will soon get to see what effect Trump’s tax cuts will have on the economy. Keep your fingers crossed.