Mick Mulvaney Promises More Trickle-Down Economics & Corporate Tax Cuts If Trump is Reelected

The President and Republicans in Congress reduced corporate tax rates to 21% from 35% in 2017. Speaking at a CEO forum sponsored by the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney said that if reelected in 2020, Donald Trump would seek further tax cuts for big business.

Mulvaney, Market Watch: "The president would love to see further refinements to tax policy. He was always disappointed we couldn’t get that corporate tax rate down just a little bit more."

That should reassure Trump's rural base that he's focused on their welfare. And Mulvaney continued, saying, "now that we've proven that they [tax cuts] can work, and that they do stimulate the economy, that the supply-side economics works..."

Poppycock [or fill in your favorite expletive]! If anything, the 2017 tax reductions should put the final nail in the coffin of supply-side economics. It was always smoke and mirrors and Republicans knew that when they passed the tax bill. But it was quite popular with corporate America and those that own lots of equities. They understood that the legislation would increase corporate profits, stock buybacks, share prices and dividends.

As Congress was approving the the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" in December 2017, the President promised that the bill would be, "fantastic for the middle-income people and for jobs, most of all ... I think we could go to 4%, 5% or even 6% [GDP growth], Senator Mitch McConnell predicted the tax cuts would pay for themselves, and Republicans in Congress promised greater business investment and substantial wage increases as increased corporate profits "trickled down" to employees. It was a pipe-dream and the vast majority of economists warned us in advance.

So, what were the actual results of the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act?"

The Atlantic: "None of those promises have come to pass. GDP growth has declined to less than 2 percent according to the latest report released yesterday [recently updated to 2.1%]. Business investment has now declined for two straight quarters, dragging down economic growth. And the federal deficit exceeds $1 trillion."

Actually, according to The Congressional Budget Office, the federal deficit increased by 12 percent in the first two months of the 2020 fiscal year, hitting $342 billion, and they warned that the rising red ink was unsustainable. The federal deficit was $587 billion when President Trump took office in January 2017, expanded to $984 billion in fiscal year 2019, and will rise to about 1.2 trillion in the coming year. And deficits are supposed to shrink [not balloon] during economic expansions.

And workers got little or nothing from the windfall to corporations. It didn't "trickle down."

Forbes: "The independent, non-partisan Congressional Research Service just released a report showing that the 2017 tax cuts for the richest Americans and corporations did not work. This confirms what anybody who has been looking at the data already knew. Investment did not boom and workers will not see the promised bump in pay . Instead, the federal government incurred massive deficits while wealth inequality increased to its highest level in three decades."

And Mick Mulvaney is promising more trickle down economics if Trump is reelected.

#news #taxes #Trump #2020election

By: Don Lam & Curated Content