The 45-Year GOP Scam Has Made The Rich Much Richer And Everyone Else Poorer

The following post is by Thom Hartmann at The Hartmann Report: 

Republicans yesterday proposed an appropriations bill that will allocate a billion dollars to pay for Trump’s Golden Epstein Dance Hall (aka “Ballroom”). Every penny of it will be borrowed and we’ll be paying interest on that money for the rest of our lifetimes unless something dramatic changes.

This year, America will spend over a trillion dollars just to pay interest on the current $39 trillion national debt, a debt entirely the result of a 45-year-long GOP scam designed to make the rich richer and elect Republicans, all while simultaneously screwing Democrats and average working class people.

It’s the biggest scandal of the century and is almost never mentioned by the press, even when they noted last week that — for the first time since World War II — our debt is now larger than our entire economy. And by 2030, Fortune magazine reports, we’ll be paying $2 trillion in interest at the current rate of burn, as Republicans add more and more items to the national debt every day.

To put that in context, here’s the “lost opportunity cost” of what that trillion dollars a year we now pay in interest — roughly $3000 every year for every man, woman, and child in the country — on the GOP’s Debt could do for America:

— First, it could guarantee universal childcare and early childhood education nationwide that would free millions of parents to work or start businesses and would pay long-term dividends in better educational outcomes.

— Second, it could make all public colleges, universities, and trade schools tuition-free, while also wiping out existing federal student loan debt over time.

— Third, the U.S. could establish a universal healthcare system or at least a robust public option with zero premiums and minimal out-of-pocket costs, ending medical bankruptcies and improving public health outcomes.

— Fourth, it could fully fund a national infrastructure modernization program,repairing every deficient bridge in the country, rebuild highways, expand mass transit, and replace aging water systems, including lead pipe removal nationwide.

— Fifth, a trillion dollars a year could finance a rapid transition to clean energy: building out solar and wind at scale, modernizing the grid, subsidizing home electrification, and accelerating EV infrastructure to catch up with China.

— Sixth, it could end homelessness in America, with massive savings in healthcare and policing.

— Seventh, we could provide a guaranteed basic income (~$500 to $1,000 a month) to every adult American, or a more targeted version for lower- and middle-income households, dramatically reducing poverty.

— Eighth, it could expand Social Security and Medicare benefits significantly — raising monthly checks, lowering the retirement age, or both — while shoring up the system’s long-term solvency.

— Ninth, the U.S. could also fund universal paid family and medical leave, so no one ever again has to go to work sick or choose between a paycheck and caring for a newborn or a sick relative.

— Tenth, it could dramatically increase teacher pay, reducing class sizes, modernizing school facilities, and providing universal free school meals.

— Eleventh, it could launch a large-scale affordable housing initiative, building millions of units, stabilizing rents, and helping first-time homebuyers with down payments.

— Twelfth, it could rebuild and expand public health infrastructure, including pandemic preparedness, local health departments, research funding, and domestic manufacturing of critical medicines and supplies.

And even after doing several of those at once, there’d still be room for things like universal broadband, modernizing the postal system, expanding national parks and conservation efforts, and funding scientific research at levels that could accelerate breakthroughs in everything from cancer to renewables to clean water.

None of these things are happening, though, because Republicans insist “we can’t afford them because of the national debt” that they, themselves created.

It all started in the 1970s when Republican strategist Jude Wanniski noted that Republicans were viewed as Grinches while Democrats — who’d brought the people the minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, free college, and dozens of other popular programs — were viewed as Santas.

His solution was twofold: have Republicans become the “tax-cut Santas” while forcing Democrats to “shoot their own Santa” in the face by cutting back on those gift-like programs. 

The strategy was elegantly simple, and was adopted by the GOP in the first year of the Reagan presidency and is still in full operation. (There’s a more complete explanation and timeline here.) It has two parts:

1. When a Republican is in the White House, spend money like a drunken sailor, running up the debt as hard and fast as possible. All this deficit spending on the national credit card also produces “good times” by stimulating the economy like crazy, making Americans think Republicans are good with economics when in fact they’re only good at spending borrowed money.

2. When a Democrat is in the White House, start screaming about the debt and how “our children will have to pay for this!!!” to force that president and the Democrats in Congress to “shoot” their own social programs by cutting them back, producing hard times and reducing the deficits.

To justify all this deficit spending, Wanniski invented a term, “supply-side economics,” arguing that tax cuts for the morbidly rich would pay for themselves as wealth “trickled down” to average working people, and Art Laffer handily supplied a “curve” that seemed technical and scientific. The media lapped it up.

It was all, of course, bullshit, but the American press bought it and no Republican has been seriously challenged on it in 45 years. 

The combined Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts along with Bush’s two wars add up to more than our current national debt of ~$39 trillion. And the only way to fix all this without causing horrible pain for the American people is to undo those three presidents’ tax cuts and take America back to the tax system we had in 1980.

When Democrats take over and end the current GOP fascist experiment, they’ll have a huge job to do, unwinding all of this debt. Fully a third of all the debt in American history has come from one president — Trump — who once bragged:

“I’m the king of debt. I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me.”

Trump’s billion-dollar Golden Epstein Dance Hall is just the latest gilded insult borrowed against our children’s future, while the trillion dollars a year we now pay in interest on the GOP’s 45-year “Two Santas” tax-cut scam could be ending homelessness, guaranteeing healthcare, rebuilding our schools, and lifting millions out of poverty. 

It’s beyond time to roll back the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts for the morbidly rich. As Graham Platner says, “We have to use the tax code to take back the money they’ve stolen from us.”

It’ll be a big job and the billionaires and big business will squeal like stuck pigs, but our debt — and the interest payments on it — have finally reached the point where the GOP’s Two Santas strategy risks crashing the nation’s entire economy. 

Democrats need to start talking about this now and point out clearly how we got here with Wanniski‘s Two Santas strategy!

The Myths Republicans Use To Help Billionaires Instead Of Workers

Robert Reich exposes the three myths Republicans use to tilt the economic playing field to favor the super-rich instead of helping workers:

It’s important to remind ourselves that a record share of the nation’s wealth is in the hands of the nation’s billionaires, who are also paying a lower tax rate than the average American.

How do the ultra-wealthy justify their wealth and their low tax rates? By using three myths — all of which are utter rubbish.

The first is trickle-down economics.

Billionaires (and their apologists) claim that their wealth trickles down to everyone else as they invest it and create jobs.

Rubbish. For more than 40 years, as wealth at the top has soared, almost nothing has trickled down. Adjusted for inflation, the median wage today is barely higher than it was four decades ago.

Trump provided a giant tax cut to the wealthiest Americans, promising it would generate $4,000 in increased income for everyone else. Did you receive it?

In reality, the super-wealthy don’t create jobs or raise wages. Jobs are created when average working people earn enough money to buy all the goods and services they produce, pushing companies to hire more people and pay them higher wages.

The second myth is the “free market.” 

The ultra-rich claim they’re being rewarded by the impersonal market for creating and doing what people are willing to pay them for.

The wages of other Americans have stagnated, they say, because most Americans are worth less in the market now that new technologies and globalization have made their jobs redundant.

Baloney. Even if they’re being rewarded, there’s no reason why the “free market” would reward vast multiples of what the rich were rewarded with decades ago.

The market can induce great feats of invention and entrepreneurship with lures of hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars — not billions.

As to the rest of us succumbing to labor-replacing globalization and labor-saving technologies, no other advanced nation has nearly the degree of inequality found in the United States, yet all these nations have been exposed to the same forces of globalization and technological change.

In reality, the ultra-wealthy have rigged the so-called “free market” in the U.S. for their own benefit. Billionaires’ campaign contributions have soared from a relatively modest $31 million in the 2010 elections to $1.2 billion in the 2024 presidential cycle — a nearly 40-fold increase.

What have they gotten for their money? Tax cuts, freedom to bash unions and monopolize markets, and government bailouts. Their pockets have been further lined by privatization and deregulation.

The third myth is that they’re superior human beings.

They portray themselves as “self-made” rugged individuals who “did it on their own” and therefore deserve their billions.

Bupkis. Six of the 10 wealthiest Americans alive today are heirs to fortunes passed on to them by wealthy ancestors.

Others had the advantages that come with wealthy parents.

Jeff Bezos’s garage-based start was funded by a quarter-million-dollar investment from his parents. Bill Gates’s mother used her business connections to help land a software deal with IBM that made Microsoft. Elon Musk came from a family that reportedly owned shares of an emerald mine in southern Africa.

Don’t fall for these three myths.

Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke.

The so-called free market has been distorted by huge campaign contributions from the ultra-rich.

Don’t lionize the ultra-rich as superior “self-made” human beings who deserve their billions. They were lucky and had connections.

In reality, there is no justification for today’s extraordinary concentration of wealth at the very top. It’s distorting our politics, rigging our markets, and granting unprecedented power to a handful of people.

The last time America faced anything comparable was at the start of the 20th century.

In 1910, former president Theodore Roosevelt warned that “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power” could destroy American democracy.

Roosevelt’s answer was to tax wealth. The estate tax was enacted in 1916 and the capital gains tax in 1922.

Since that time, both have eroded. As the rich have accumulated greater wealth, they have also amassed more political power — and have used that political power to reduce their taxes.

Teddy Roosevelt understood something about the American economy and the ultra-rich that has now reemerged, even more extreme and more dangerous. We must understand it, too — and act.

For our economy and democracy, we must tax the wealth of the wealthiest.