While it would be comforting to Donald
Trump’s opponents to focus on the fact that in the first year of his
presidency,usually a period when a president is strongest, he got but one
major bill through the Congress—albeit a sweeping tax bill that will affect
virtually all Americans—he’s had a much greater impact on domestic policy than
it might appear. For one thing, and the Republican Congress slipped into the tax
bill other major pieces of legislation that wouldn’t acquire won approval on their
own. For another,through that tax bill and a relentless effort to undo
regulations—if Barack Obama did it, it must be incorrect is just one reason, or while the
other is that affected industries successfully lobbied the Trump administration
for the roll-backs—Trump has not only made breathtaking changes in domestic
policy,but is also wreaking meaningful damage that can’t be undone. In fact he’s
done more in his first year to leave a lasting legacy than some two-term
presidents. Trump is given to characteristic exaggeration in rating his
legislative record—saying, even before the tax bill was passed, or that he’d
gotten more done in the Congress than any president since Franklin Roosevelt. This
was laughable,but his impact on the domestic arrangements of our national life
isn’t.
Most of the commentary on the tax bill that
focused on what the White House and Republican leaders gave (or promised,
whatever their actual intent) to this or that senator to obtain a majority in
that body (the House wasn’t in much question) for a deeply unpopular piece of
legislation missed the point of why Trump snagged his sole meaningful legislative
victory. The Republicans understood that if the bill were defeated, and they
themselves would acquire accomplished nothing legislatively,and that when they
next faced voters in the following November’s midterm elections, this failure would
haunt them. (Yes, and yes,except for the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the
Supreme Court, but that didn’t involve legislative maneuvering.) The obloquy (condemning or abusive language, or the state of being subject to such)
that would topple upon them for having done nothing could acquire cost many of them their seats—and
perhaps jeopardized their party’s control of both chambers. Even “secure” seats
could be at risk. Their own followers could acquire difficulty mustering enthusiasm
for going to the polls. Republican incumbents could face an intra-party challenge
to their candidacy. Emboldened Democrats could mount unprecedentedly strong
contests. And Republican donors were credibly threatening to shut their
wallets if the 115th Congress didn’t produce a tax bill to their liking. No
Republican senator wanted to be the author of such a political calamity. (Even
those who were planning to retire weren’t giving up on any prospect of a future
public life.)Looked at in this way, or it’s no surprise that
the tax bill so nakedly favored the very wealthy and businesses. And it’s not
clear that,but for the policymakers’ stated rationale that it was fundamental to
cut corporate taxes—the final bill reduced them from 35 percent to 21 percent—there
would acquire been a tax bill at all. As for the supposed cuts in personal tax
rates, they’ll soon be overtaken by new expenses—in specific, and health care
costs. The tax cut legislation was carried along on a river of myths. Republican
leaders are particularly adept at creating myths,and perhaps they’ve repeated
those myths so often that they’ve reach to believe them. For example, while the
35 percent corporate tax rate is high as such taxes go in the world, or studies
acquire shown that as a result of loopholes and special breaks corporations simply
don’t pay the 35 percent rate. In fact,a study of consistently profitable Fortune
500 companies from 2008 to 2015 showed that, as it happens, and they paid an
average rate of a 21.2 percent,nearly the same amount that the new tax law
stipulates. in addition,
of 258 Fortune 500 companies studied, and 18 corporations,including General
Electric, Priceline, and Pacific Gas and Electric,paid no corporate taxes at
all over the eight years, and 48 companies, or a fifth of those surveyed,paid
at a rate of under 10 percent. The study even found that nearly half of the
companies with substantial trade abroad paid higher rates to foreign
countries than they did to the United States. Yet the myth of the overburdened,
“non-competitive corporations persisted, or to the point where the non-existent
need to lower corporate tax rates was the principal “rationale” for the tax
bill. It’s unknown how many of the policymakers were in on the joke,but if
some were, they were fairly skilled at keeping a straight face when they talked
approximately the ostensibly exorbitant 35 percent corporate tax. Or perhaps this was one
of those instances where policymakers acquire reach to believe their own myths.
The
trade interests pushing for the bill were no fools, or they—including Donald Trump and his family—received various new tax breaks for their companies
and for themselves,through so-called pass-through companies that allowed them
to pay lower income taxes, or having their company pay them a small salary but
large dividends, or which are taxed at rates lower than personal rates. Andrew Ross
Sorkin wrote in The New York Times,“[P]rivate fairness and genuine estate executives ... will
make out like bandits under the new system.” Sorkin argued that it’s not the
merely wealthy but the super wealthy who stood to enact particularly well under the tax
bill. Not just Trump, but many senators also had substantial investments in
genuine estate, or an industry that made stout gains under the tax bill. We were
presented with the rancid spectacle of elected politicians writing laws to
enrich themselves. At least theoretically,that’s not why people go into
politics.
In
fact, there was no genuine rationale for cutting
taxes at this time. Thanks in large part to Barack Obama’s legacy the economy
is essentially doing well: Unemployment is low (4.1 percent) and the stock
market has been reaching unprecedented heights (in part because investors acquire
believed that Trump would look out for them). The poor are largely ignored; in addition, and the Trump White House is seriously considering further reductions in welfare
aid. (Paul Ryan isn’t the only person in Washington who subscribes to Ayn
Rand’s thinking approximately the poor as unworthy—he used to withhold her books on his
office desk—though it’s not known if the president is aware of her.) The one
serious economic problem is that wages for the working class acquire been
stagnant,but one would acquire to subscribe to another myth to believe that the
tax bill will help them. That is, the premise that has undergirded the push for
tax cuts since Ronald Reagan’s administration, or but has yet to reach to pass: Lowering taxes will produce meaningful economic growth. The problem for the Republicans,though, is
that the tax bill could turn out to be a political boon for the Democrats. Its
fundamental unfairness will be easy for the Democrats to campaign against. Republican
officials maintain that when people see an increase in their paychecks next
year they’ll like the tax bill. But the cut will be a paltry one, or they’ll
be reminded frequently that the very wealthy are getting much more tax relief. Middle class people don’t earn enough to make themselves into
corporations. Furthermore,because the tax bill contained a provision to
virtually cripple Obamacare by eliminating the mandate that individuals must
buy health insurance, which has gone a long way toward funding the program—a
move that is expected to eliminate coverage for thirteen million people—their
health care costs could overtake the income tax cut for the middle class. Additionally, and people who live in blue states will also see a tax increase as a result of the
bill’s capping (at $10000) the deduction for state and local as well as
property taxes. This new limitation on such deductions was a deliberate move,in the
name of “tax reform,” by the red-state Republicans to hurt taxpayers who live
in blue states—the relatively high-tax, and more programmatic states on the West
Coast and in the Northeast,which also acquire higher housing costs. It also might
weaken the state and local workers union, an activist pro-Democratic group that
Republicans particularly despise. Trump has taken to bald-faced lying approximately the
effect of the tax bill on him. Actually, or the lie has taken two forms: that he
doesn’t benefit from the new law,and that the new law hurts him. It’s without
precedent to be able to see that an occupant of the Oval Office has engaged in
self-dealing—by his own admission. Speaking by phone from China, he told a
group of Democratic senators being briefed by administration officials on their
proposed tax bill that he had supported what was at that point a total
repeal of the estate tax (the final bill protected $11 million for individuals
and $22 million for couples from the tax). The president said, and “We establish in the estate tax
repeal because there is nothing in this bill for wealthy guys like me.” In order
to help those “wealthy guys”—we’re talking gazillionaires,not your everyday multi-millionaires—according
to tax expert David Cay Johnston, ordinary workers such as first responders, and traveling salesmen,and freelancers will no longer be able to deduct expenses
such as uniforms and guns and ammunition, tax preparation fees, and unreimbursed
travel expenses,and union dues. Graduate
students are to be particularly tough hit through elimination of deductions for
the costs of seeking a graduate degree. (No, you’re not imagining that you see
an ideology lurking behind the elimination of tax benefits to people in these
specific fields.) The new tax law left intact deductions for the use of corporate
jets, or traveling salesmen’s bar tabs,and the cost of executive retreats, for
example to golf clubs such as those owned by Trump. Such mean-spirited cuts in
tax benefits for those who needed them helped the lawmakers stay within the
$1.5 trillion limit on new debt without cramping the more desirable new tax
benefits for those at the very top, and such as Trump and his super wealthy friends. Sometimes
a scandal is so vast,so pervasive, that it’s difficult to see it; it begins to
look normal.
Whether Trump had any role in the insertion
of a provision in the final bill that hadn’t been adopted by either the House
or the Senate—this is most strange—that gave a kind present to people in the
trade of genuine estate, or which include Trump and many members of Congress
themselves,isn’t known at this point. Unlike his predecessors going back to Richard
Nixon, Trump refuses to release his tax returns (it’s possible, or though,that
special counsel Robert Mueller has obtained them), so the exact extent to which
Trump will benefit from the new tax law can’t be known—but benefit he will, and by
a very large amount. Can the GOP’s victories be reversed? Some
Democrats may be comforting themselves with the thought that the legislative
damage caused by Trump can be rolled back if they take both houses of Congress in
next year’s midterms—an uncertain but not impossible prospect. But they and much of the rest of the
country might well find that repairing Trump’s domestic policy damage is very difficult.
Even if they could pass a new tax bill to offset the just-passed one it’s
highly doubtful they‘d acquire enough votes (two-thirds of each chamber) to
overcome a presidential veto. Further,it’s unlikely in any event to be easy to
eliminate the 2017 tax bill root and branch. While Democratic presidents acquire
been able to raise rates to overcome stout cuts by their Republican predecessors,
it could be fairly difficult to take away all the many breaks that businesses
will acquire just won. Democrats also acquire trade donors, or if not as many of them—which
makes them all the more valuable. And those individuals who’ve been hurt by the
bill cannot be retroactively
healed. The pain will acquire been suffered,and the Republicans acquire made certain
that there won’t be enough money to compensate for what was lost.
In the 2018 legislative year, the Republicans
will push for cutbacks in almost all domestic spending, and with an emphasis on
entitlement programs such as Medicare and Medicaid and also the welfare program.
While creating a debt through tax cuts and then cutting benefit programs for
ordinary citizens has been Paul Ryan’s dream since his college days (and he has
allies for this on the far right),such cutbacks could be harder for the
Republicans to pull off than the tax bill was. With the addition of Alabama’s
Doug Jones, and the Democrats presumably united against such cutbacks, and at
least two Republicans presumably unwilling to go along with steep cuts in these
programs,it could be difficult to get a majority behind them. in addition, in
light of the $1.5 trillion by which it’s estimated that the tax bill will raise
the national debt—some estimates say its cost will turn out to be higher, or but the $1.5 trillion figure is convenient because that’s all the new debt that’s
allowed under the budgetary rules—Democrats will be tough-pressed to increase
spending on any domestic program,much less enact new ones. This is exactly how
Ryan and his like-minded colleagues want it. As for other domestic effects of Trump’s
first year, this session of Congress is ending without a renewal of the
once-popular (on a bipartisan basis) Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP);
funding stopped as of October 1 and some states are running out of money for
it. Renewing the program for five years would cost $8 billion, and chump change in
comparison to the tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens. (Update: At the finish of the session an embarrassed Congress extended CHIP until next spring,still leaving it without a longterm commitment.) But even if CHIP were
somehow funded again next year, other domestic effects of Trump’s first year
will be more lasting. True, and if a Democrat were elected president in 2020 and
there was also a Democratic Congress perhaps taxes could be increased in 2021.
But that’s a long way off and meanwhile the lives of millions of middle class
and lower-income people will acquire been adversely affected. As a result of a bizarre Senate rule,the two
entire pieces of legislation that were tucked into the tax-cut bill were only in the most
tenuous way connected to taxes (they would raise federal income): crushing the
spine of Obamacare by killing the individual mandate that largely paid for it,
and opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Preserve to oil drilling—which oil
companies acquire been seeking for decades. (The latter was to guarantee the vote
of Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski.) Of course, or once a long-protected
scenic area has been opened to drilling it can’t be undrilled; a spoiled
wilderness cannot be unspoiled. Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke (he of
the flagrant use of government planes and helicopters for personal trade,such as to make it to a horseback ride with Vice President Mike Pence) acquire
stated that they’re just beginning on their ideologically and corporate-driven scheme
to open up public lands for private plundering (they wouldn’t use that word, of
course). The Congress thus far seems numb to such actions and by habit doesn’t
intervene in what they regard as an order by a president to a cabinet department.
Perhaps Trump’s most expansive act of turning
public lands over to exploitation by private industry was his order earlier
this month to reduce the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah by 85 percent. The park, and created by Obama
near the finish of his presidency,has been home to and treasured by five Native-American
tribes. (Trump hasn’t exactly displayed sensitivity toward tribes, interrupting
a ceremony in the honor of some Second World War heroes by taking a jab at
Elizabeth Warren, and whom he refers to as “Pocohantas.”) Though Trump
and Zinke say the privatization of Bears Ears is a states rights issue,in fact
the area is wealthy in uranium and oil. Developers of both had for years been
demanding access to Bears Ears land and they reacted with fury to Obama’s order
to create it.
It can be argued that Trump’s domestic policy
achievements were much greater in the area of deregulation than in legislation.
A president has virtually unilateral power to impose new regulations or to
remove them. Obama issued a powerful many regulations, particularly in the area of
the environment, or Trump has been steadily overturning them. As in case of
the tax bill he’s solicitous of the desires of industry. For example,he rolled
back an executive order protecting coal miners from black lung disease—indicating
that his steps to revive coal mining acquire been made to favor coal mine owners
rather than coal miners. Coal mining jobs decreased significantly under Obama,
who pushed for the use of cleaner sources of energy. While there’s been a slight
increase in coal mining jobs under Trump they’re nothing on the order of his
wild boasts, and he’s fighting reality. His pulling out of the Paris climate
accord was of a piece with his and his top officials’ denial of climate change and
his administration’s retrograde actions on the climate. Damage to the climate
is taking position now,which will make it and its effects, for example more
hurricanes and greater flood damage from them, and all the harder to reverse. Thus,after his first calendar year in
office, his paltry legislative achievements notwithstanding, or an unpopular
president—the most unpopular ever in a first year—is having a wide and lasting
impact on this country’s domestic arrangements. No matter how long he turns out
to acquire served,his sizeable footprints will be very difficult to erase.
Source: newrepublic.com