According to analysis by Vox.com, the total amount of Donald Trump’s proposed tax breaks could have cut child poverty in the United States by at least half. If you aren’t concerned about that, then how about funding debt-free college, universal healthcare, or removing lead from drinking water in the United States? There are numerous things we could have spent that money on, but instead, Trump wants to give it to his already-wealthy friends. Ring of Fire’s Farron Cousins discusses this.
Transcript of the above video:
Donald Trump is proposing a five-and-a-half-trillion-dollar tax cut over the next 10 years. The lion’s share of that, the vast majority of it, going to people like Donald Trump who happen to be in the top 5% of income earners. In fact, this tax cut is so one-sided that Trump Administration officials have even admitted publicly that they’re not even sure if it’s going to help the middle class at all. Some of them have said may actually even raise taxes on the middle class.
Nonetheless, Vox.com has put together a phenomenal analysis of what this tax cut for the wealthy could pay for if the United States had its priorities straight. Let’s get the big one started with, universal childcare and child poverty. Tackling those projects over the next 10 years, cutting child poverty in half, 1.1 trillion dollars, so you start with five and a half trillion that we’re giving to wealthy, take away 1.1 trillion to cut child poverty in half. You got 4.4 trillion left.
Reducing overall American poverty, a project that would cost 1 trillion over 10 years. Now, we’re operating at about 3.4 trillion, we’ve cut child poverty in half and we’ve greatly reduced the number of Americans living in poverty.
Free college education at publicly institutions, 750 billion dollars over 10 years. We were at 3.4 now, so now we’re at 2.65. 2.65 trillion dollars left, we’ve tackled debt-free college, American poverty, child poverty and childcare.
Investing in infrastructure, 1 trillion dollars over the next 10 years, to get us up to par where we need to be. Now, we’re at 1.65 trillion left.
Universal preschool, 100 billion dollars over 10 years. That one’s relatively cheap, so now we’re at 1.55 trillion dollars left. Of course, actually, I’ve got to say this, this caveat that Vox.com put in there, the 100 billion is if we had matching funds from the states. Assuming the federal government wants to pay for it, it would be 250 billion, so we’ll go ahead and tack that total down to 1.4 trillion dollars left.
Un-insurance rates, here’s the thing, we could use some of that money that Donald Trump is going to hand over to the wealthy and, instead of giving it to the wealthy elite, we could drive down the cost of health insurance for every single person in this country. It would cost 1 trillion dollars over 10 years.
We’ve reduced the cost of insurance for everybody, from the poor to the wealthy, in the United States. Everybody still has to pay some, but everybody’s rates go down. We have universal pre-kindergarten and childcare. We’ve cut the child poverty rate in half. Debt-free college at public institutions. We’ve reduced the overall level of American poverty, and we still have 450 billion dollars left. But instead of doing any of those projects, instead of doing any one of those projects, Donald Trump has decided to take that five-and-a-half-trillion dollars and give it to the wealthy.
Now keep in mind this is the largest tax cut in the history of the United States. It’s larger than the Bush tax cuts. It’s larger than the economic stimulus package passed by President Obama. This is the largest giveaway to the wealthy elite that we have ever seen in the entire history of the United States, maybe in the history of the world. It’s all because Donald Trump wants to reward himself and his buddies, I guess if he has friends. He wants to give them a little more money. Screw the middle class. Screw all these projects that we could fix with this money and still have some left over. Hell, maybe we just throw a big party with that because we fixed so many problems; but no, Republicans aren’t serious about tackling anything in the United States other than giving the wealthy tax breaks.
We know, because we have seen from history, what happens when we do this. If Donald Trump enacts this tax cut, we are headed towards a massive depression. Not a recession, a depression. That’s what will happen if he enacts these tax cuts. Always keep in mind when you hear anybody talk about these tax cuts and how great they might be, just think about this list from Vox and think of all the problems that we could have solved if we weren’t so desperate to give millionaires and billionaires a few more dollars every single year.
