It’s done. The GOP has passed the most extensive tax reform in the past three decades. The $1.5 trillion cut will benefit America’s working and middle classes. Republicans united, stuck to their guns, and passed it without help from the Democrats, who were not going to lift a finger to help the Trump White House get a key part of its agenda passed. In doing so, they betted against the American worker and hoped that millions of families get screwed to score political points. They thought this bill was Armageddon. It was not. Eighty percent of Americans stand to benefit from this legislation. Businesses are increasing employee investment, handing out bonuses, boosting wages, and will increase philanthropic donations.
CBS News found three families from different backgrounds and income levels, two of which were confident that their bill would go up under Trump’s tax overhaul; they all ended up saving money. From the North Carolina single mother making less than $40,000 to a California small business- owning family earning $300,000, everyone received substantial relief.
In Nevada, the tax bill paved way for 11,000 new jobs. Rep. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) will have to explain why she voted against the legislation that helped make this happen:
In their desperation, Democrats and the media have taken their spin to absurd heights, which The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel pointed out in her op-ed. Every key talking point the Left tossed out there was wrong. Everything they’ve said since then has been wrong. Why? Because whether the Democrats can admit it or not, the GOP tax bill offered real policy results and relief to millions of American families. You can’t spin that. In all, the Democrat-media complex remains horrifically out of touch with most of the country (via WSJ):For New York developer Steven Witkoff, the tax overhaul signed today by President Donald Trump will have an immediate effect: he’s plowing ahead with his plan to develop the stalled Fontainebleau resort in Las Vegas.
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As soon as it became clear to Witkoff that the bill had a good chance of clearing both houses of Congress, he began seeking financing for as much as 60 percent of the estimated $3 billion in development costs, he said. He plans a resort with 4,000 rooms, a casino and a restaurant on the property, purchased for $600 million in August, more than seven years after billionaire Carl Icahn acquired it out of bankruptcy. The project will create 6,000 hotel jobs and 5,000 construction jobs, Witkoff said.
In the wake of last year’s election, a humiliated press corps was forced to reassess, to explain how it had gotten the presidential race so monumentally wrong. Conclusions: It had been too blinded by its own biases, too sheltered from Middle America. It apologized. It promised to do better. Or not.
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Nearly every story quotes a variation of Mrs. Pelosi’s line that the bill is “wholesale robbery of the middle class.” Mr. Schumer continues to claim the reform helps “only the wealthiest few.” These are Trumpian-size whoppers, which the media eagerly repeats. Yet even the liberal Tax Policy Center has acknowledged that 90% of the middle class will get a tax cut in 2018, and that the average cut will be $1,600.
USA Today was so desperate to depict the bill as a tax hike that its analysis of “5 household situations” included a childless single renter earning $1 million a year, paying $50,000 in state and local taxes, and claiming $40,000 in charitable deductions. The paper triumphantly pointed out that this downtrodden soul would pay $1,887 more in taxes. And therefore have to forgo a bottle of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild.
Democrats spent months insisting that corporations would pocket their tax cuts rather than invest in their workers. The press continues to parrot this line—even as AT&T, Comcast, Wells Fargo and others immediately announced bonuses, pay hikes, higher starting wages, better benefits and plans for new hiring. Democrats call these PR stunts, but so what? Workers are benefiting.
The left and the press claim the bill—which abolishes ObamaCare’s individual mandate starting in 2019—will throw 13 million people off health care. They don’t seem to know any of the millions of Americans who will be relieved from paying a tax that can run more than $2,000 a family for being uninsured. The left and the press belittle the average cut as “only” $100 a month. They are out of touch with millions of solidly middle-income Americans who follow tight budgets. A hundred dollars can be enough for piano lessons, a family night out or new winter coats. The left and the press are suggesting the reform will primarily benefit Donald Trump’s empire—as if the Republican caucus, including Sens. Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse, love Mr. Trump so much that they were willing to spend all fall on a bill for his personal enrichment.
So, while the Left whines, Americans are getting relief. The economic growth this quarter is at solid four percent. Consumer confidence is at a 17-year high. Unemployment is at a near two-decade low. Every indicator also shows that the biggest bonus this country received this year was Hillary Clinton not being elected president. Bravo to Trump and the Republicans, this is a grade-A legislative achievement. For Democrats, let’s see how they defend their abject abandonment of the people they say they’re champions of on a daily basis.
“They are running with these upside-down-world stories because so far they’ve gotten away with it,” wrote Strassel. “The best way to triumph in this war of spin is to produce real policy results that help real people—as they just did with tax reform, no matter what you read to the contrary.”
