When Donald Trump unveiled his economic plan Monday, the aspect that caught the most attention was the idea of making child care expenses fully deductible. And that single feature is a model in miniature of the entire plan. For families whose children attend day care, and occasionally call in a babysitter, the Trump plan will hand back about $600 a year. For wealthy families whose child care comes in the form of a live-in nanny or au pair, the payback is closer to $11,000 a year.*
And the overall price tag for gifting the wealthy with cheap nannies would be a $20 billion a year tab for the nation.
The Trump plan dangles treats for everyone, but again and again middle class workers get a snack, while the wealthy feast off fantastically lowered taxes and massive breaks. And Trump isn’t talking about deficits. Because there’s an underlying assumption that giving the wealthiest people and the wealthiest companies in the history of the planet another enormous pile of money to heap onto their existing pile of money will somehow trigger such unprecedented growth that the deficit won’t be a problem.
Because boom! Lowering taxes equals growth. Just ask Kansas.
Overall, the plan is the lovechild of Reagan middle class-killing voodoo and George W. Bush’s budget-busting tax cuts, with a few ideas stolen directly from Hillary’s plan and grafted crudely onto the side. The result is a plan that not only rewards the rich and sinks the budget—it’s also just plain ugly.
… the initial reaction from economists, financial services executives and Republican analysts was less than positive as critics ripped the plan for lacking specifics while relying on broad generalizations to attack free-trade deals. …
On Wall Street, analysts also criticized the speech as vague and reliant on questionable statistics. “My general response is that one speech does not make an economic plan and most of what he relied on was hyperbole,” said David Kotok, chief investment officer at Cumberland Advisors. “Let him do a dozen more of these and flesh out the specifics and then you could actually begin to analyze things.”
Those statistics were a wonder. For example, on unemployment, Trump consistently avoided using the unemployment rate. Instead, he used values that included the retired when talking of older workers, students when talking of younger workers, and both when trying to present a vision of an idle America. Trump cited the growth rate of just one low quarter rather than the last eight years to claim that the economy was stagnant. He turned a 5 million increase of workers into a 14 million worker loss by flipping the numbers. He created a 58 percent unemployment rate among African Americans by dipping the age low enough that most of them were still busy attending high school.
But while there are lies, damn lies, and statistics, most of Trump’s speech was simply damn lies.
Trump: “Hillary Clinton short-circuited again — to use a now famous term — when she accidentally told the truth and said she wanted to raise taxes on the middle class.”
This is ridiculously false — something that earned Trump a “Pants on Fire” from our friends at PolitiFact three days ago. It is appalling that it still turns up in a prepared speech.
It was ridiculously false, and unfortunately typical.
Attacking trade agreements came up on multiple occasions, and Trump worked hard to saddle Hillary with a bill she neither negotiated nor signed.
Trump: “NAFTA, which her husband signed, is a very, very big reason [for economic problems in upstate New York].”
We’ve been over this time and again. Bill Clinton was certainly a supporter of NAFTA who pushed approval through Congress. But it was negotiated and signed by President George H.W. Bush. (Here’s a photo.) Moreover, more Republicans than Democrats voted for the deal, as the trade pact was vehemently opposed by labor unions. One key ally for Clinton was then-House Minority Whip (and later House speaker) Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), now a Trump supporter.
Trump also made the claim that NAFTA had dropped the number of auto workers from 285,000 to 160,000, though the actual cause of the decline was a mix of factors. He also failed to mention that the number of auto workers under Donald Trump would have fallen from 285,000 to zero, because Trump supported allowing the auto companies to fail.
Trump also claimed that changes in environmental regulation amounting to a “war on coal” had cost the jobs of 50,000 workers in Michigan alone—an astounding claim, because the number of coal miners in Michigan was zero and is zero.
The one place where Trump provided some detail was in his desire to chop the tax rates for both corporations and individuals. As with every other aspect of the plan, that money would reward those who are already rolling in wealth.
… the tax plan will likely produce a hefty price tag with benefits tilted toward those earning the highest incomes.
Donald Trump’s economic plan is also Ted Cruz’s economic plan. It’s Paul Ryan’s economic plan. It’s Sam Brownback’s economic plan. It’s George W. Bush’s economic plan … only more so.
Give to those who have plenty. And reward the 1 percent—at a time when that 1 percent is wealthier than it has ever been.
* $100 a week expense at 12% tax vs. $700 a week expense at 30% tax