President Donald Trump, in his usual bloviating style of extreme excess, wants to “jump start” the U.S. economy with the Greatest Tax Cut Ever, a $3 trillion bonanza for the rich and the more rich.

And Trump might just get it done with a Republican congress long addicted to ignoring 98 percent of the voters to heap praise and tax breaks upon the wealthy and our global corporations.

But it is in the details that the claims, the alternative facts and the invented truth get bundled together in a package that simply deserves to be called “fake facts,” a claim where, once at least, the president would be correct in asserting.

The whole scam on the nation begins with a fake process of estimating the effect of tax cuts for the rich and their corporate friends. Republicans have invented a scorecard called “dynamic scoring,” that allows them to ignore factual economic tools for estimation and instead permits them to, more or less, pick a number and claim that growth will reach that zenith. Republicans estimate that the tax cuts will generate a U.S. GDP of 3-4 percent.

Is that a good number? Well for the most recent quarter U.S. GDP grew at a rate of 3.1 percent, so would you spend $3 trillion dollars to attain that next month or next year? If so, then it is a good deal, at least for the wealthiest Americans.

The plan includes cutting corporate taxes, which the president claims are the highest of developed nations. He is correct and totally dishonest at the same time. Our corporate tax rate is 35 percent, quite high compared to our trading partners. But our effective corporate tax rate is 18.4 percent, which is the median amount U.S. corporations pay in taxes, an amount in about the middle of our competitors.

Further, if corporate taxes are keeping our corporations from accruing wealth and adding jobs, then why are U.S. corporations currently sitting on $1.9 trillion dollars in cash? The top three cash companies in the U.S. are Apple, holding a whopping $137 billion in cash, Microsoft, holding $68.3 billion, and Google, counting $48.1 billion and growing. Do you think these companies, given a tax cut, will suddenly go out and hire American workers?

And as for those American workers, where are they? We stand currently at 4.3 percent unemployment, a number experts call full employment. And, additionally, there are 6.1 million unfilled jobs in the U.S. as of Sept. 1, 2017. It is not that workers lack jobs, it is that our corporations have crippled workers’ rights by the continuing threat of automating jobs or shipping jobs overseas if workers demand a living wage.

And if you are still not convinced this is a tax cut seeking out wealthy folks, consider the intended ending of the Estate Tax, a favorite Republican piñata. Eliminating the Estate Tax affects exactly 0.2 percent of Americans and does not even begin taxation until a couple reports assets in excess of about $11 million dollars.

Finally, reducing the rates of taxation at the top while increasing the rates at the bottom, when cutting business taxes that benefit more wealthy equity holders strongly favors the rich, not the middle class.

But the pitch the president of fake facts makes is that he would not personally gain, though clearly the elimination of the estate tax and the lowering of his tax rate would benefit him and his family.

This is what Republicans always do, cut taxes on the wealthy, expand the deficit and the debt, then blame Democrats for being big spenders when more money is needed to fund healthcare, Social Security and Medicare.

The nation does not need a tax cut, the economy is expanding. What we need are spending cuts in wasteful spending, like the current defense budget, combined with targeted tax increases on the wealthy and our corporations.

What we will get is a lot of Fake Facts.

 

Jim Crawford is a retired educator and political enthusiast living here in the Tri-State.