Republicans abandon fiscal responsibility - Iowa echo opinion

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/editorials/2018/09/19/gop-not-party-fiscal-responsibility-tax-cuts-deficit-debt-spending-increases/1341928002/
An Iowa editorial opinion, published in the Des Moines Register

Once upon a time, the Republicans claimed to be the party of fiscal responsibility. 

Republican politicians lamented the federal deficit and debt. 

They campaigned on reducing spending, making Social Security solvent and balancing Uncle Sam’s budget.

That was a bunch of baloney.

The GOP-controlled Congress has exacerbated this country’s financial problems. The federal deficit nearly doubled in August from a year earlier, the Treasury Department said last week. The government ran a $214 billion deficit, compared with a $107 billion deficit in August 2017.

Why? The same reason a household drowns in red ink: It spends more than it brings in. 

Government spending is up 7 percent so far this fiscal year, while revenues have risen only 1 percent.

Republicans, including those representing Iowa in Congress, insisted on passing a sweeping tax cut bill that took effect in January. It set the country on course to further starve an already strapped federal government. The cuts are helping push the nation toward unprecedented debt and heightening the risk of another financial crisis, according to a June report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The federal debt currently stands at about $15 trillion, or 78 percent of the size of the U.S. economy. 

If current trends continue, the debt will roughly equal the size of the economy within a decade, the budget office predicts.

The hypocrisy of the GOP is on full display. Yet with mid-term elections looming, some of them are still trying to put lipstick on their disastrous tax-cut pig.

Rep. David Young issued a press release in August gushing about the supposed benefits of the bill he supported. He claims it is “growing wages” of Iowans and notes he is “working with his colleagues to make sure the tax relief for individuals is permanent.”

Huh? Cement the recklessness in place for generations to come?

There is not a word in Young’s press release about the tax cuts' contribution to the soaring federal deficit and debt. Not a word about where the government is going to find the money to fund health care for seniors, the military, child welfare and numerous other responsibilities. Not a word about the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars paid each year toward interest on the national debt.

Tax cuts do not “pay for themselves.” 

Even when the economy is good, as it is now, these cuts do not generate enough economic activity to be self-financing. 

And just wait until the economy is not good.

Instead of acknowledging this fiscal reality revealed in numerous federal reports or doing anything to shore up Medicare and Social Security, House GOP leaders are now planning to push a new set of tax-cut proposals.
They seem to think this will win over voters.

Let's hope not. Anyone who cares about the fiscal solvency and future of this country should insist on hearing how candidates plan to pay for their spending and tax ideas. If they can't or won't answer, vote to send irresponsible politicians packing.

This editorial is the opinion of the Des Moines Register’s editorial board: Carol Hunter, executive editor; Kathie Obradovich, opinion editor; Andie Dominick, editorial writer, and Richard Doak and Rox Laird, editorial board members.

Tax cuts for the rich will stigmatize the poor

OPINION- Several words came to mind when I considered the budget that Trump and Republicans passed. One of them was "sanctimony."

Opinion by John R. Crisp published in the New Jersey Herald.

Sanctimony used to be synonymous with holiness, but in modern usage, it refers to "affected or hypocritical holiness." So sanctimony is to holiness as self-righteousness is to righteousness, that is, the hypocritical version of a desirable attribute.

Thus, in the Trump's *tax cuts for the rich* budget, the generous act of helping other people get enough to eat provides an opportunity to criticize and patronize the poor for their bad food choices and to congratulate ourselves for making better choices than they do.

Under their plan, citizens who get food support from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) would receive half of their benefits in the form of a "Harvest Box," which would contain foods selected on the basis of their supposed nutritional value, as well as on their economic benefit to American farmers.

According to the New York Times, the "Harvest Box" was conceived by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue as part of a program to cut food assistance by $214 billion over the next decade. Perdue described it as "a bold, innovative approach to providing nutritious food to people who need assistance feeding themselves and their families -- and all of it is grown by American farmers and producers."

Budget director Mick Mulvaney was enthusiastic about the idea, comparing it to the Blue Apron grocery delivery service.

In practical terms, "Harvest Box" has a close-to-zero chance of approval. The idea was immediately dismissed by the Republican chairs of the agriculture committees in the House and Senate, and it was never seriously discussed in hearings. No one even bothered to calculate the logistical challenges and costs of putting boxes of food into the hands of the 46 million Americans who used SNAP last year.

No, instead of a serious policy proposal, "Harvest Box" feels more like a mean-spirited opportunity to stick a finger in the eye of people who are short on resources. It supports the myth of the "lazy poor," whose poverty serves as testimony to their innate irresponsibility and untrustworthiness.

"Harvest Box" is an impractical version of other efforts -- such as imposing work requirements and drug testing on recipients of public assistance -- to generate more responsibility and better behavior in the poor. Accountability is a worthy goal, but efforts such as these serve to stigmatize and demean the poor while shifting blame for their plight in their direction rather than toward public policy that works to their disadvantage.

And such efforts always ignore data. For example, according to Forbes magazine, 77 percent of SNAP recipients are children, elderly or disabled non-elderly. And non-disabled adults between 18 and 49 who are living in a childless home can receive only three months of benefits during any three-year period, unless they are already working 20-plus hours per week.

In short, SNAP serves people who are having a hard time getting enough to eat in the richest country in the world. Sanctimonious restrictions on such programs may make us feel better about our responsibilities and obligations, but they also make it easier for candidate Mitt Romney to categorize 47 percent of Americans as "takers." That simply isn't true.

Here's the point: 

As long as the increasingly small segment of our society that holds an increasingly large share of the money and power can keep the middle class's anger and blame directed downward toward the poor rather than upward at rich, and as long as they can (wrongly) keep the rest of us convinced that the poor, rather than the rich, are draining our culture of its resources ~ 

Republicans don't need Russian agents working among us to sow hatred, discord and social fragmentation.

Tragically, we're quite capable of doing that, ourselves.

Prevent the next Great Recession - responsible tax policy

Republicans in the US Congress have a rare opportunity to improve the quality of American life by creating government incentives for education and infrastructure investments.  Instead, their obsession is to cut taxes for the rich.~ Commentary by David Rosenberg
(The market is very expensive....)

Prevent the next Recession by investing in America

David Rosenberg, the chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff, said the Republican plan to stimulate the economy with tax cuts likely will push the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates faster than normal. 

That may mean bad news for stocks, which already are trading at higher-than-average valuations.

“Why would you stimulate fiscal policy heading into the ninth year of a late-cycle expansion?” he said in an interview on the Financial Sense Newshour podcast. “Why wouldn't you save your policy bullets from a fiscal perspective to also fight the next recession?”

While wage growth has been sluggish during the recovery since 2009, the unemployment rate is at a 17-year low of 4.1 percent, the Labor Department said last week. 

Average hourly earnings rose 2.5 percent from a year earlier. Faster gains in paychecks would help consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy.

“This is going to put the Fed in a bit of a box because… this is (economic) stimulus with a 4% unemployment rate heading into the ninth year of an expansion, which is going to cause the Fed to raise rates more than they otherwise would have,” he said. “The timing is really bad.”

The Republican-controlled Congress is in the final stages of approving a sweeping reform plan that will cut corporate and personal income taxes (MaineWriter: aka "tax cuts for the rich"). 

President Donald Trump, who was elected last year on a pro-business platform of tax cuts, jobs growth and infrastructure spending, is expected to sign the bill into law as early as this month.

Rosenberg said U.S. government debt levels are too high to make fiscal stimulus as effective as it was in the past.

“There's no doubt that the corporate tax structure has to be changed, but not at the expense of raising the deficit at a time when the deficit is already 3.5 percent of GDP and a time when the gross public debt is more than 100% of GDP," he said. “If we had a balanced budget and we had a national debt to GDP ratio that was closer to 60% than 100%, you get a much bigger bang for the buck.”

The Fed cut rates to record lows in 2008 as the collapsing U.S. property bubble led to a major financial crisis and the worst economic slowdown since the Great Depression. The central bank began to raise rates two years ago as the U.S. economy continued to expand, even if it was the slowest recovery in the post-war period.

Monetary policy set by the Fed has a greater effect on the economy and asset valuations, Rosenberg said.

“I hearken back to the first tax cut engineered by Ronald Reagan in 1981 when he took the top marginal personal rate from 70% down to 50%,” Rosenberg said. “[Fed Chairman] Paul Volcker responded to that by raising rates and, quite unexpectedly and as a surprise to most economists at the time, we had a six quarter recession on our hands despite the fact that we had fiscal stimulus."

Stocks are expensive compared with historical trends for price-to-earnings ratios, he said. Publicly traded companies will need to post blowout earnings for the market to deliver gains as rates increase.

"The market is very expensive. Even with the tax stimulus, if you want to add on the $10 earnings per share with a lot of the goodies you'll get with the Senate and House version, you're still left with a 17.5 forward multiple for 2018,” he said. “Historically, the forward multiple is 15 and 17.5 is really what the peak was back in 2007. The multiples tell you that those expected returns are seriously constrained at this moment.”

A Christian view on Republican tax cuts for the rich

This "echo" is a re-blogged letter to the editor, published in the Cincinatti Enquirer opinion section. Honestly, I'm glad to read a Christian point of view about the Republican "tax cuts for the rich", whereby the widening economic disparities between rich and poor are finally exposed. (From my cruising through the nation's newspapers' opinion pages.)

Submitted to the Cincinnati Enquirer by Rev. Alan Dicken (@AlanDicken1). He is the senior pastor at Carthage Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

Earlier this month, Senator Rob Portman took to the pages of this paper to extol the virtues of so-called “tax reform.” Since then, more details have emerged about the Republican tax plan, and it’s clear “reform” isn’t quite the right word for it. 

Rather, it seems like an exclusive invitation to a small table with a large feast.

Like the House bill, the Senate bill puts more money in the pockets of super wealthy on the false promise that somehow average Americans will benefit. The bill cuts the corporate tax rate from 35 to 20 percent with more than one-third of the benefit going to the top 1 percent. It also makes deep cuts to the estate tax that will benefit the heirs of the richest 0.2 percent of estates, who would get a tax cut of $4.4 million. The bill lowers the tax rate for business income and individual rates, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. That’s a large helping of tax relief for those who seem to have more than enough.

Even the provision GOP senators tout as a break for working families – an expansion of the Child Tax Credit – tilts towards the most fortunate. Under the bill, a married couple with two kids earning $500,000 would receive a $4,000 credit. Meanwhile, a single mother with two kids making $14,500 would get $75, according to CBPP. Another healthy dose of assistance to those with plenty.

The Senate bill eliminates Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, which keeps health care premiums down and stabilizes the market. Republican senators are banking on people dropping out of the subsidized marketplace to help pay for their tax cuts. When younger, healthier people leave, premiums will go up, and sick people who need care could find themselves unable to afford insurance. An abundance of servings of care to those who have sufficient care already.

I’m not concerned about this bill as an economist, policymaker or politician. I am a faith leader. My faith tells me a lot of things about how the poor and oppressed should be treated. They are to be lifted up, cared for, clothed, fed, and treated with dignity and respect that is deserving of all of God’s children.

Unfortunately, we have many in our community who are poor and oppressed. Cincinnati’s overall child poverty rate for children under 6 is 52 percent – one of the highest in the nation. For black children, it is 74 percent. The bill will widen the gulf between the haves and the have-nots and strip away at programs that lift up our neighbors.

This bill doesn’t feed the hungry, it stuffs those who are already full. This bill doesn’t clothe the naked, it adorns the opulent. It doesn’t treat the poor with dignity and respect, instead, this bill would add $1.5 trillion to the deficit over 10 years. Which means likely budget cuts to programs like federal food aid, Medicaid, Pell Grants, job training programs and more.

Portman has spoken openly about his Christian faith. In our Christian tradition, there is a scripture in Luke 14:12-14 in which Jesus tells us, “When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” Who is really getting invited to the bountiful banquet provided by this bill? As far as I can tell, the most vulnerable don’t have a seat at the table.

I applaud Portman’s efforts to combat human trafficking, to stem the drug epidemic, and when he expanded the table to advocate for LGBTQ equality. If this tax bill passes, we might not have the resources needed to give a struggling addict treatment through Medicaid. Or help a victim of human trafficking get the job training she needs to start a new life. Portman, think about your neighbors in Cincinnati. Expand your table. Invite more of God’s children to the banquet.