Right-wing media are blaming Biden for the effects of Trump’s tax cuts – By Zachary Pleat (Media Matters) / June 8 2021
Right-wing media are trying to hold President Joe Biden responsible for one of the effects of former President Donald Trump’s flawed tax cuts — the scheduled expiration of the individual income tax cuts at the end of 2025. Right-wing media figures are dubiously arguing that Biden’s budget proposal violates his campaign promise to not enact a tax increase on any Americans earning under $400,000 a year. Yet they’re ignoring the reality that Republicans designed these tax cuts to expire — so they could pass without Democratic support — and the GOP failed to extend the cuts when it had the power to do so.
Republicans own the flawed Trump tax cuts
The Trump tax cuts — officially known as the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — were passed on a lie that they would pay for themselves, and they have been a failure in that regard. Federal revenues have dropped, and the positive economic benefits quickly faded. And as NPR reported in 2019, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that “more than 60% of the tax savings went to people in the top 20% of the income ladder.” It was, simply, a tax cut targeted to the rich — especially because it permanently cut corporate taxes, and the individual income tax cuts were temporary.
Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress passed the law on a party-line vote, ensuring that the GOP would own all of its effects — including the scheduled expiration of the individual income tax cuts at the end of 2025. The GOP-controlled Senate in 2018 had the opportunity to make these tax cuts permanent, but failed to do so. Yet right-wing media would have people believe that Biden is responsible for these tax cuts ending in less than five years.
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