Economically, the rich are doing just fine, yet the GOP is brazenly selling old hat trickle-down economic theories laden with rhetoric about projected economic growth that will benefit working people. Worse, they are doing so even though opinion polling shows the majority of Americans do not want Congress to pass tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.
Alan Essig
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news release September 27, 2017 ITEP ED on GOP Tax Plan: “There is Something Terribly Wrong with This Picture”
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news release August 30, 2017 ITEP on President Trump’s Missouri Visit: The Policy Doesn’t Match the Rhetoric
Following is a statement by Alan Essig, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, regarding President Trump’s visit to Springfield, Mo. The president is expected to tout… -
blog August 17, 2017 Context Is Everything
Today, the economic climate is starkly different, but it seems GOP leaders are relying on messaging and luck to push through the biggest tax package since 1986. The White House, Republican leaders and anti-tax advocates all have been toeing the same erroneous line: their plans to cut individual and corporate taxes will benefit middle class families and grow the economy. This is, of course, baloney.
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blog July 31, 2017 The Problems with the Multi-Million-Dollar Effort to Secure Millionaire and Corporate Tax Cuts
Until GOP leaders put forth a detailed tax proposal, we will not know for certain whether the plan will focus on the middle-class and create jobs. But what we do know is that unless the plan is a radical departure from the principles outlined by President Trump earlier this year or laid out by Paul Ryan last year in his “Better Way,” plan, GOP-led tax “reform” efforts will be a tax break bonanza for the wealthiest Americans while delivering a pittance to working people.
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blog July 27, 2017 GOP Leaders in Congress and the White House Set Out Goals for Tax Reform that Their Plans Fail to Meet
Today Republican leaders in Congress and officials from the White House released a joint statement on tax reform, claiming that “the single most important action we can take to grow our economy and help the middle class get ahead is to fix our broken tax code for families, small business, and American job creators competing at home and around the globe.”
Unfortunately, the proposals they have put forward so far do not address any such goals.
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news release July 20, 2017 50-State Analysis of Trump’s Tax Outline: Poorer Taxpayers and Poorer States are Disadvantaged
Not only would President Trump’s proposed tax plan fail to deliver on its promise of largely helping middle-class taxpayers, it also would shower a disproportionate share of the total tax… -
report July 17, 2017 Comment Letter on Tax Reform to Senate Finance Chairman
This letter outlines ITEP’s two broad objectives for meaningful federal tax reform and discusses six recommendations that would achieve them.
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blog June 26, 2017 Senate Health Care Reform Bill Just as “Mean” as the House Version
The Congressional Budget Office today released its score of the Senate Health Care proposal and the news is not good. It’s no wonder a narrow group of 13 lawmakers cobbled together the bill behind closed doors. Now that the measure has seen the light of day, we know that it epitomizes Robin Hood in reverse policies by snatching health coverage from 22 million people by 2026 (15 million in 2018) while showering tax cuts on the already wealthy.
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news release June 20, 2017 Speaker Ryan’s “Bold Agenda” for the Country Boils Down to Tax Breaks for the Wealthy
Speaker Paul Ryan today correctly outlined some of working people’s concerns, including the desire for more good jobs and access to the training required to secure those jobs. But his bottom line policy prescriptions for addressing the concerns of working people are the same old trickle-down economic policies that time after time have proven to primarily benefit the wealthy.
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blog June 16, 2017 The GOP Health Plan Cuts Medicaid to Lower Taxes for the Richest 3 Percent
The bill passed by the House of Representatives last month to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the most unpopular legislation in decades.
Lawmakers should reverse course and take the necessary time to put together legislation that would preserve or, better yet, improve access to health care. But this isn’t likely to happen because at its core, the American Health Care Act isn’t truly health care reform. It is tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the rich shrouded in legislative provisions that would weaken the existing health care law.
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news release May 23, 2017 Trump’s Budget Proposal and Tax Plan Are the Antithesis of Populism
A month ago, President Trump released a tax sketch that likely would redistribute wealth upward, and today he has poured salt on the wound with a proposed budget that would gut safety net programs and cut funding for other services that help move people out of poverty. Yet the PR refrain is the same Orwellian prattle we’ve been hearing for years: water isn’t wet, tax cuts for the rich will eventually trickle down to the rest of us, and balancing the federal budget must always rely on cutting programs that benefit ordinary people.
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blog May 22, 2017 ITEP’s Commitment to Being a Voice for Low-, Moderate- and Middle-Income People in Tax Policy Debates
A strong voice for working people in federal and state tax policy debates is absolutely critical. Sound, progressive tax policies make all the difference between high-quality educational systems or crowded classrooms with limited resources. They account for the difference between structurally sound roads and bridges or potholes and other crumbling infrastructure. At the federal level, good tax policy means raising enough revenue so the nation can adequately fund child care and early education, health care, food inspection, national parks, and a clean, safe environment among other things.
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news release May 18, 2017 Corporate Lobbyists Should Not Shape the Nation’s Tax Reform Debate
If the lineup for today’s House Ways and Means Committee hearing on tax reform is an indication of how the tax policy debate will unfold in the coming months, businesses and their lobbyists will have outsize influence in the process. This is a mistake.
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news release April 26, 2017 Trump Tax Plan Revives Economic Voodoo
Following is a statement by Alan Essig, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, regarding the tax plan released today by the Trump Administration. The administration has…