Why Angry About Tax Cuts, and Why Democrats Are Wrong to Foment This Anger

The New York Post invited columnist John Crudele to share his reasons why the tax reforms package, just passed and signed into law by the President, is so unpopular.

Santa Trump gave American taxpayers a gift that they should have been thrilled and thankful to receive. Yet polls — starting from before the plan was actually passed — show that Americans hated the idea of a tax cut.

Quinnipiac’s poll, for instance, showed that just 25 percent of voters approved the plan. Other surveys — by ABC News and the Washington Post, CNN, Morning Consult and YouGov — put approval only slightly higher. But those were still nowhere near the support that past tax cuts received.

He then references the widespread popularity for previous tax cuts by Reagan, Bush, and their extensions under Barack Obama.

Crudele then explains his opposition to the tax cuts:

With the US already $20 trillion in debt, I think it was unconscionable for Washington to change the tax laws in a way that will increase that debt by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

And that increase is on top of how much the debt is going to increase anyway. There were better ways to help the economy.

Larry Kudlow has concluded that the cuts will spur economic growth and tax revenue, which will more than cover for the initial deficit.

But I’d be shocked if enough Americans took the long view like I did to bring the approval rating down to an average of just 32 percent.

There are, of course, several explanations for the poll results. The most basic one is that the polls could have been wrong. Pollsters got the results of the last presidential election awfully wrong, so why trust what they say now?

Polling has been off lately. It's becoming more difficult for the polling forms to command respect from average readers. Should we really care what a sampling of people think about the tax cuts. Did the polling take place in a specific state, or were the respondents spread throughout the country?

Another reason might be that Americans bought into the idea that this tax cut was disproportionately going to benefit the rich. And it probably will.

The cuts will benefit a wide swath of men and women in the country. 80% of Americans will see a cut in their taxes. Yes, a large number of wealthy people will see a cut, too, but that's because "The rich" are paying most of the taxes to begin with. Congress needs to move toward a flat tax at some point so that this "eat the rich" or "soak the rich" insanity gets put to rest once and for all.

That anti-rich argument was mostly a story planted by Democrats and other Trump haters. The people reached by the pollsters could have simply been repeating what they were hearing on news shows and reading in the newspapers.

This reason is the more likely one, since the media corruption has become endemic and fanatical with the Trump administration. The media had a quiet disdain for Reagan, and then the press would mock George W. Bush's speaking skills. But the anti-Presidential animus eating away at the press corps is unprecedented under Trump.

Now that a number of corporations have been giving out $1,000 bonuses and crediting the tax reform for their largesse, that opinion could change quickly.

The corporations are giving money to their workers. What more do the naysayers want? They want the president removed from power, and there is nothing that he can do that would change their opinion. They are so rigidly attached to their progressive, left-wing worldview, that nothing can change their mind.

Crudele offers one more reason why the high negative opinion at this time for the tax cuts:

But I can think of another reason Americans might have been against the tax cut. And it’s the same reason that kids eventually outgrow their belief in Santa Claus.

It’s called cynicism.

Maybe we’ve gotten to the point where nothing that Washington does is right. Grown-up Americans don’t believe in Santa, and they don’t believe our politicians can solve our problems.

Let’s hope we will soon grow out of that stage.

Indeed, I hope they do, and I believe that they will when they see more money in their paycheck and less money going to the IRS.

This argument brings up why Democrats are overplaying their class warfare card on the tax reform package. David Harsanyi of The National Review reports:

According to political analysts, 2018 Democrats will use the just-passed tax reform as a way to argue that the Republican Party is the party of the plutocracy, which is another way of saying that Democrats are going to use the same argument they’ve been using for the past three decades with varying degrees of success. A number of liberals have claimed that the passage of “unpopular” tax reform is historically analogous to the passage of Obamacare, which triggered the loss of hundreds of Democrat seats and, perhaps, control of the presidency.

I am already smiling. Tax reform means that more people will keep their money. Obamacare was advertised with hollow promise, none of them came true, and people lost their health insurance and their money.

Big differences here.

Yes, the tax bill is unpopular. Then again, I’m not sure you’ve noticed that everything Washington, D.C., tries to do is unpopular. Nothing polls well. Not the president. Not Congress. Not Democrats. Not legislation. Not even erstwhile popular vote-winning candidates. 

This argument connects very well with Crudele's point about cynicism in the electorate.

However — apologies to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — they can be somewhat content knowing that voters will probably like it once they find out what’s in it.

In otherwords, they will give the bill a pass once they see what's in it.

Why do so many Americans believe that the middle class is getting a tax hike? Because outlets they trust are constantly lying to them. Both in framing and content, the coverage of the tax cuts has been impressively dishonest.

YEP! Finally, at least one reporter is calling out the militant negative bias in the press, directly targeting President Trump and everything he accomplishes.

There will always be ideological arguments regarding the efficacy of tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, but at some point people are going to find out that they’ve gotten one, too. The nonpartisan  liberals at the Tax Policy Center concede that 80 percent of Americans will see a tax cut in 2018, and that the average cut will be $2,140 — which might be something to scoff at in D.C., but I imagine a bunch of voters surprised by these savings will be less cynical. Only 4.8 percent of Americans will see a tax increase.

The elitist arrogance stands out once again. They scoff at saving $2,000, but that's big money for families ravaged by eight years of Obama-nomics.

Like Obamacare, people don’t know what’s in the bill.

This time, though, it's not the fault of the majority party, which did not hide the contents of the tax reform package. 

But unlike Obamacare, the repeal of the individual insurance mandate gives millions a choice. The passage of Obamacare, after all, upended lives. The Affordable Care Act became synonymous with “health care insurance,” and voters attributed everything that went wrong with that insurance to the bill.

Yes. There is no way that voters will attribute something bad or wrong to legislation which has allowed them to keep more money, a law which has encouraged more businesses and corporate interests to relocate and invest in the United States to create jobs.

And since Democrats offered a litany of fantastical promises about the future of health care, the disapproval was well-deserved. Millions began seeing their insurance plans discontinued as soon as Obamacare was implemented, despite assurances from the president and pliant Democrats that no such thing would happen. For many, premiums in the individual markets doubled over four years of Obamacare. Voters dealt with these tangible, real-life consequences.

In other words, the Democrats lied, health care died, and so did their House Majority. This latest litany of lying can still doom their chances of retaking the House in Election 2018, even though they claim that this is the best opportunity in nearly a decade to do so. Let's also remember that Democratic projects for House seats in 2016 underperformed, too.

Whatever valid concerns there are about debt or spending (and they are valid), it is unlikely that tax cuts will have similar long-term consequences on voting as those on health care. It is more likely that tax cuts will do little to change the dynamics of the coming years. But it is plausible that because of the overreaction from the left, millions of Americans who thought they were going pay more in taxes will find a new child credit and be thankful.

BAM! Even Trump's daughter Ivanka worked hard to get this tax credit going. She has made the concerns for single mothers a center-piece of the GOP economic agenda for once, as did US Senator Tim Scott when he celebrated the tax reform package's passage in Congress.

As an ideological matter, every time a Democrat claims that keeping more of your own money is tantamount to “stealing” — which happens often — voters should remember this is fundamentally a debate between people who believe the state should have first dibs on your property and people who don’t. The only way to frame the bill as a tax hike is by using the 2025 expiration of individual rate cuts. And the only way they won’t be extended is if Democrats decide to raise taxes again. These are debates Republicans should embrace.

YES! 

That’s not to say tax reform is a panacea for Republicans. It’s far from it. Historically speaking, the party in power will likely lose a bunch of seats in the 2018 midterms. But the claim, as Democrats are sure to make, that those losses are unique or tied to the toxicity of an agenda item — particularly a tax cut, which is generally popular among Americans (when they know it exists) — is far-fetched.

Yes it is.

I do acknowledge that the Republican Congress will likely lose seats. They lost seats last year, and there is enough hustle in D+ leaning House seats with Republicans representing them in swing states with a larger, more diverse voting population. Carlos Curbelo is one example whose tenure in Congress remains tenuous. A Florida Republican in swing district on the Southern tip of South Florida, he has cut a centrist fold in his re-election bid, and only Wikileaks exposés helped him defeat his last opponent, along with Trump's strength at the top of the ticket.

Final Reflection

The relentlessly negative press has had to admit that the tax reform will benefit all Americans, not just "the rich". The income tax rates have been lowered significantly, for example, which all but proves that even high tax cuts which depended on SALT deductions will not see the bump or massive increase in taxes despite the lowered tax deduction credit.

Many blue state Republican lawmakers voted for the Tax Reform package, even with the SALT deduction significantly lowered, counting on massive support from President Trump and the GOP majorities to stand by them faithfully for casting the votes to get tax reform across the finish line.

McConnell and Co.'s decision to add repeal of Obamacare's individual mandate very likely sweetened the deal for many wayward Republicans facing tough headwinds going into Election 2018.