In the aftermath of the Senate passing the most significant tax reform package in thirty years, the liberal bloodletting has begun. From the pages of the New York Times to the editorial pages of the Washington Post, readers are treated to a steady diet of class warfare rhetoric that makes Republicans seem as if they eat the poor. Further, enraged liberals are suddenly concerned about the national debt should Congress pass tax reform and relief laws this year. The hyperbole is only matched by liberal hypocrisy, both of which are eclipsed by the utter economic illiteracy of the Democratic Party.
The Democrats’ first mistake in their analysis of this legislation is claiming that tax reductions are “deficit spending,” as a writer for The Atlantic opined in an op-ed over the weekend. The author actually said that “It is stunning that a modern political party could give itself procedural permission to pass $1.5 trillion in deficit spending and still manage to raise taxes on tens of millions of working families.”
Such a misleading statement in a periodical is more akin to propaganda than journalism. For starters, the government does not own the economy and every dollar in it. As such, claiming that any sort of tax cut is a spending bill illustrates a fundamental liberal belief: that government is the owner of all we have. In their collective mind, the Left believes that government, like God, knows what is best for its people and that it, alone, is capable of properly allocating society’s economic assets. Medieval monarchs believed this too, which, eventually, led to the American Revolution.
In addition to mistakenly stating that tax cuts are deficit spending, the Left has made another grave error in its analysis of the current tax reform legislation: the claim that this proposal benefits only the rich. According to data tables compiled by the Cato Institute, using data from the Congressional Budget Office, middle income earners will, as a group, receive a nearly 51% tax cut! Even Elizabeth Warren should be supportive of this bill, if her ultimate goal wasn’t American socialism.
For all their griping, Democrats oppose tax reform for two reasons: 1.) it was not their idea, and 2.) it doesn’t support their vision of more government control over the economy. If working for the middle class is truly their goal, this would be their bill. As Chris Edwards writes for the Cato Institute “Under the Senate tax plan in 2019, middle-income households would receive much larger percentage cuts than higher-income households.”
Tax reform now will stimulate our economy, help pay-down the national debt, and provide tax relief for working families. It is the greatest tax reform package since Ronald Reagan was President, and it must pass even over Democrat hysteria.
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