USATODAY's editors didn't fact-check SHitler's oped on his tax plan ...

[CousinIT]

... so THIS guy did:

Link to tweet

ENTIRE THREAD, UNROLLED: https://tttthreads.com/thread/922069415566434304

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Since @USATODAY's editors didn't fact-check @realDonaldTrump's oped on his tax plan, I will do so. 1/

President Trump: With tax reform we can make it morning in America again
With my plan in place, jobs will grow, family incomes will rise and we will make America great again.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/10/22/president-trump-tax-reform-lets-make-morning-america-again-column/782233001/

Even the title is off. Reagan said it was "Morning in America" in 1984. His tax reform was in 1986. Come on, people. 2/

First graf: Trump says the '86 Act was Reagan's second major tax bill. This conveniently skips over TEFRA, enacted in 1982. 3/

Why is that important? Because TEFRA was 1 of the biggest tax increases ever, offsetting much of the '81 tax cut. 4/

Ronald Reagan understood
It used to be only Republicans who enjoyed repeating over and over again, "Ronald Reagan! Ronald Reagan! Ronald Reagan!" Now Democrats are getting in on the Reagan name game, too. In answer…
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/apr/04/barack-obama/ronald-reagan-understood-make-deal-he-would-have-p/

And b/c economy tanked after Reagan '81 tax cut. Unemployment almost 11% in '82. Recession more severe than '08. 5/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/21/business/economy/21leonhardt.html

Which isn't to say tax cuts caused downturn or hikes reversed it. But attributing growth to tax cuts, as Trump does, gets history wrong. 6/

(Reagan's own chief economist agrees: http://www.nber.org/chapters/c10943.pdf http://www.nber.org/papers/w17927/) 7/

We didn't experience any economic miracles after the 1986 Tax Reform, either. Donald Trump used to know this. 8/

Donald Trump Reverses Stance on 1986 Tax Reform Bill
The President's pitch for tax reform included praise for a bill he had previously opposed.
http://fortune.com/2017/08/30/donald-trump-tax-reform-1986-ronald-reagan-flip-flop/

Trump calls the '80s boom one of the largest expansions in history, ignoring THE largest, which was after Clinton raised taxes in '93. 9/



And ignoring current expansion. (With job growth starting same month Obamacare passed & continuing thru top tax rate hikes. Just sayin') 10/



Then there is this bizarre point about the Space Shuttle. Does Trump (or whoever wrote this tripe) not realize NASA is a gov't agency? 11/

More to the point: Trump's fiscal agenda slashes medical & scientific research, which will hamper innovation. 12/

Trump budget seeks huge cuts to science and medical research, disease prevention
National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, National Science Foundation and National Cancer Institute would see cuts under President Trump…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/05/22/trump-budget-seeks-huge-cuts-to-disease-prevention-and-medical-research-departments/?utm_term=.5002073869cd

Now onto the tax lies, starting w/Trump's oft-repeated lie that US is one of the highest-tax nations. How did @USATODAY eds let that go? 13/



Trump also repeats the long-debunked myth that the tax code and laws are 70,000 pages long. 14/

The myth of the 70,000-page federal tax code
House Republicans are misleading people about how long the tax code really is.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/29/15109214/tax-code-page-count-complexity-simplification-reform-ways-means

That's like saying the Constitution is as long as the combined length of every court opinion ever written on constitutional issues. 15/

More importantly, Trump's tax plan creates a huge new loophole (for people like Trump) that will spawn massive tax avoidance... 16/
..and require an entire new chapter of rules to prevent abuse (probably in vain). See:
Opinion | Trump’s Giant Loophole
Republicans say their pass-through tax cut will help small businesses. But the big winners are the 1 percent.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/30/opinion/trump-tax-plan-pass-through-business.html

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2017/08/24/437654/trump-loophole-benefit-millionaires-not-small-businesses/17/

Trump says "We will cut taxes for hardworking, middle-class families." But here is who his tax plan really benefits - the top 1%. 18/



Top 1% get a tax cut 17x bigger *as a share of their income* as middle-income fams. 500x bigger in raw $$. 19/

T17-0227 - Unified Framework; Distribution of Federal Tax Change by Expanded Cash Income Percentile, 2027
Table shows the distributional effects of the Unified Framework as released 9/27/2017 by Expanded Cash Income Percentile in 2027. Proposal would repeal individual and corporate...
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/model-estimates/unified-framework-september-2017/t17-0227-unified-framework-distribution-federal-tax

Based on those same estimates, 47 million families will be paying HIGHER taxes by 2027. 20/

Trump says "We will double the standard deduction, which means the first $24,000 of a family’s income will be tax-free." 21/

But his plan actually doesn't double it and also repeals personal exemptions. So, MORE of a typical family's income will be taxable. 22/

Under Trump's plan, the first $24,000 for couples is tax-free. True. But this is how much will be tax-free in 2018 under current law. 23/



He also says "We will lower rates." But his plan *raises* the bottom rate. (C'mon editors!) 24/

He pledges to increase the Child Tax Credit. OK, but how much? Why isn't that in the plan already? Does that mean plan costs even more? 25/

Trump of course repeats the lie that the "passthrough loophole" in his plan is for "small and medium-sized businesses." 26/
The loophole is really for millionaires like Trump. 86% of businesses get NOTHING. ~80% goes to millionaires.

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2017/08/24/437654/trump-loophole-benefit-millionaires-not-small-businesses/ 27/

Notably, Trump does not even say that his plan cuts corporate taxes, even though that's the centerpiece, costing more than $2 trillion. 28/

He says that his Council of Economic Advisers estimates that his plan would boost a typical family's wages $4,000. 29/
The $4,000 claim is utter bunk, as explained very clearly here by @KClausing and Ed Kleinbard:

Trump’s economists say a corporate tax cut will raise wages by $4,000. It doesn’t add up.
The UK cut corporate rates and wages still dropped.
https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/10/20/16506256/cea-report-corporate-taxes-wages-boost-job-growth 30/

Also, CEA's (bogus) report only purported to gauge the effect of a corporate rate cut (in isolation, which is one reason it was bogus). 31/

It did even not purport to gauge the effect of the entire plan, most importantly the plan's enormous costs. 32/

Yet Trump says that if his plan passes, "CEA estimates that it will" raise wages by a specific dollar amount. That's simply a lie. 33/

And it's a lie that @USATODAY's editors -- but more importantly CEA itself -- should have prevented. 34/

It's telling that Trump's main selling point for the middle-class is a bogus estimate of the trickle-down effects of corporate tax cuts. 35/

And yet Team Trump can't even make that argument straightfwdly & without hiding the fact that corp. tax cuts are the heart of the plan. 36/

We've come to expect lies from Trump & his team. But we should expect better fact-checking from newspapers before they print lies. 37/

To conclude: The House will be voting on a budget this week that will fast-track Trump's tax cuts & increase deficits by $1.5 trillion. 38/

That will put education, health care, and many other important priorities at severe risk. 39/
Here are resources for making your voice heard:

Trump Tax Toolkit
NO TAX CUTS FOR THE 1%
https://trumptaxtoolkit.org/

Not One Penny in Tax Cuts for Millionaires, Billionaires, and Wealthy Corporations
The last thing we need is for the tax code to be even more rigged in favor of billionaires and corporate insiders. Instead, we need to fight for a tax code that
https://notonepenny.org/


http://stoptrumptaxcuts.org/

[SunSeeker]

1. Great post. Bookmarking for all the informative links. nt

[LeftInTX]

2. Also bookmarked

[rurallib]

3. Will be using this - thank you much!

[TeamPooka]

4. USA today should be ashamed of themselves

USA today should be ashamed of themselves

[Achilleaze]

5. USA Today is falling down on the job

undermining their own cred when they let right wing lies and propaganda spin pass without correction. Sad.

[SergeStorms]

8. USA Today........

is a corporate entity owned by the Gannett Company. They have much to gain buy NOT fact checking and printing the truth.

[pandr32]

6. Bookmarking this for reference

[They_Live]

7. K & R

[kacekwl]

9. Thank you for the very informative post.

Great.

[MrModerate]

10. So the short story is, that there's hardly one sentence in Trump's speech . . .

That isn't an easily checkable lie.

This does strike me as the most egregious lying he's done so far. Let's see if it triggers the final collapse.

[DK504]

11. 'We didn't experience any economic miracles after the 1986 Tax Reform, either.

"We didn't experience any economic miracles after the 1986 Tax Reform, either. Donald Trump used to know this. "

All of Raygun's advisor's knew there would be zero economic miracles. That's why they went for it, it was to benefit the top 10%. It, along with the all the other economic voodoo plans he pushed through it has gotten us to here. Tearing the Education Dept. to shreds was another way to weaken America, dumb, compellable idiots would never think to speak up to their masters, if they didn't know how fucked they truly are. Weakening every single department of the government, private sector protections, going after the unions....it has been part of the plan for decades.

It is finally coming true today and people are too damn dumb to know it began 40 years ago.

[mountain grammy]

12. Thank you for posting..

[Angry Dragon]

13. great post