Republicans have one piece of major legislation to run on and whatever effect it will have is years away from being measurable. But don't tell them that—they're uniformly touting the tax law's "incredible results," as Trump put it last month. Politico writes:
Unemployment, which dropped to 3.9 percent in April, has been declining for years, falling to 4.1 percent before the tax cuts were approved.
The billions in bonuses being handed out are tiny compared to the trillions of dollars in overall wages that Americans workers earn – and with the tight labor market, they might have been handed out anyway.
Meanwhile, the Treasury Department hasn’t even finished writing the new rules spelling out how exactly the new law will work.
Right. That’s just one of the reasons voters smell a rat, writes the Washington Post.
Some Republicans have begun expressing frustration at how difficult the law has been to sell to the public and question whether that will turn around in time to help them in the November midterms. [...]
“It should be an easier sell than it is, particularly in an economy with a 4 percent unemployment rate and a pretty healthy environment,” Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) said.
He blamed “political assumptions and core beliefs [that] are getting in the way of objective reality. We’re in an era where voters, whether on the left or the right, don’t think anything good ever comes out of government.”
Gee, who’s responsible for that? What a joker—the entire GOP platform for decades has been aimed at denigrating “objective reality” and the prospect that government can actually produce positive results. Also, it would help if Republicans weren't trying to sell voters on what every reasonable economist says is nothing short of mythical evidence at present.
Economists say they will have a hard time proving the law is having the predicted effects because it will be challenging to separate the law's benefits from what would have happened anyway.
With unemployment on a downward trend, even before the tax law, wages are bound to go up anyway as the market tightens, independent of the tax changes, many say.
Some might even call that “objective reality.”
