I know you know that Republicans throw money at the rich. Doctrines may shift, Russia may go from bad guy to BFF, NATO may defend the free world one day and dilute our sovereignty the next, but tax cuts for the rich are the one True North of Republican cosmology. Without it, the party perishes, not only from diminished campaign contributions but from lack of raison d'être.
As to just how much money Republicans throw at the rich, the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economy Policy (ITEP) released a report last month that’s gone largely unremarked in the media but that makes starkly clear just how faithful a friend and lapdog the GOP has been to our wealthiest friends and neighbors. What ITEP did was to total up all the tax reductions to the rich enacted since George W. Bush became president in 2001, subtracting from that total the restoration of higher tax rates on the rich that went through under President Barack Obama.
Here are the numbers: Since 2001, the income tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent come to $1,366 billion. The estate tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent come to $838 billion. Subtract from these cuts the hikes on the wealthiest 1 percent enacted during the Obama intermission, and we have a grand total of $1,924 billion that the wealthiest have been able to pocket for their rainy day funds.
I think that's close enough that we can round it up a bit to an even $2,000 billion—which, for those of you who've been counting the zeros, is actually $2 trillion.
And that doesn't count, of course, the additional $100 billion in cuts to capital gains taxes that the administration now says it plans to implement administratively by changing how it calculates the initial value of investments. That $100 billion, too, would flow chiefly to that same 1 percent.
But back to that $2 trillion: By a curious coincidence, that was also the amount that the administration proposed to save in its (mercifully, not very enactable) 2019 budget by reducing spending on Medicaid ($1.4 trillion), Medicare ($530 billion) and Social Security ($25 billion)—which comes in at a cool $1.955 trillion. As with the tax cut to the 1 percent, let’s just round that to $2 trillion, too.
So: Republican presidents and congresses have cut the taxes of the 1 percent by $2 trillion over the past 17 years, and Trump has now proposed to cut spending on Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security by the same $2 trillion.
Democratic campaign consultants, do with this what you will.
Tax Cuts for the rich. Deregulation for the powerful. Wage suppression for everyone else. These are the tenets of trickle-down economics, the conservatives' age-old strategy for advantaging the interests of the rich and powerful over those of the middle class and poor. The articles in Trickle-Downers are devoted, first, to exposing and refuting these lies, but equally, to reminding Americans that these claims aren't made because they are true. Rather, they are made because they are the most effective way elites have found to bully, confuse and intimidate middle- and working-class voters. Trickle-down claims are not real economics. They are negotiating strategies. Here at the Prospect, we hope to help you win that negotiation.
