Vice President Kamala Harris, as she did yesterday at a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, is stepping up her warnings about the threat he poses to democracy. There is one part of the convicted felon’s fascistic program, however, that he is not emphasizing: Like all fascists before him he has a plan to make the working class pay for the great majority of his programs and to further sharply reduce the taxes the wealthy have to pay.
The serial misogynist ex-president throws up a fog of lies, accusations, self-aggrandizement, and social issues to tell you what he will do if he gets back into the White House. In addition, while spelling out so many of the dramatically hateful parts of his program, he is also covering up how he plans to pay for his fascistic plans: Raise your taxes, unless you’re in the top 5%, earning $360,000 or more.
A think-tank specializing in economic analysis, using IRS data and calculations and applying them to Trump’s tax proposals for the calendar years starting in 2026, calculates Trump will produce a tax cut that year for the top 1% of $36,320, a $1,700 tax cut for the next 4%—and everyone else would see their taxes rise.
Trump’s foe, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is calling out Trump’s fascism and, simultaneously pushing the news about his tax cuts for the rich in her campaign commercials.
They feature citizens of all races, creeds, genders, and politics telling the camera—as middle-class people—that same scenario about Trump’s intention to make the workers pay more and the rich pay less. This, of course, is what every fascist has done, once getting into any position of power in any government.
To sidetrack attention from that prospect, and so many other Trump schemes to clobber workers and their families, Trump has concocted a mass diversion of social issues, slander, and lies. His supporters eat it up. The mainstream media, and notably the cable news networks, meanwhile, ignore his tax plan.
Instead, they repeat Trump’s mantras: There’s “a mass migrant invasion of murderers and child predators and gang members, drug dealers, and thugs” flooding across the U.S.-Mexico border, says the former president. “Haitians are eating your pet dogs and cats.” An unspecified “they” will take “American” jobs. “Kamala is dumb.”
As for taxes, even economists polled by the conservative Wall Street Journal agree Trump’s tax cut would mushroom the federal deficit and produce so much government borrowing that the Fed would have to slam on the brakes by raising interest rates, throwing the country into a recession. ITEP adds that action and the tax cut widen the income and wealth gap between the rich and the rest of us.
Would raise taxes on the majority
ITEP’s analysis, using federal figures and IRS-provided parameters, “found Trump’s tax plan would, on average, raise taxes on 95% of Americans while delivering massive windfalls to the wealthiest,” says David Kass, executive director of Americans For Tax Fairness, which released the ITEP study:
- The poorest 20% would see an average tax hike of $790.
- The second fifth would see an average tax hike of +$1,430.
- The middle 20% would face a $1,530 average tax increase.
The second and middle groups are “the middle class,” statisticians say. They earn between $28,600 and $94,100 a year.
- The fourth group would pay an average of $1,790 more. Their income tops out at $157,500.
- The 80%-95% income group would pay an average of $610 more, and the 95%-99% crowd would get $7,160 on average, back.
- The richest 1% would enjoy a $36,320 tax cut.
The biggest contributor to “the rich get the cut and everybody else gets the shaft” is the Trump-GOP tax cut of eight years ago. It expires at the end of the next calendar year, but only for individual income taxes.
That individual income tax cut didn’t help the middle class or the poor very much. Using averages from another think tank, People’s World calculated then the poorest taxpayers got a tax cut of 11 cents a week. The 1% got such a big weekly cut they could buy a set of new tires for their SUVs every day.
Trump would extend all those individual tax cuts. That would give the richest 1%–who make at least $914,900–an $80,680 windfall each in 2026. The next 4% would reap $16,630. The poorest fifth? $110. That’s two dollars a week.
Much of those big individual cuts for the rich would be offset, ITEP adds, by two other provisions in Trump’s tax scheme: Repeal of the federal tax credit for buying green vehicles and the high tariffs on imports, especially Chinese imports.
The tax credit for green vehicles is $5,000 each unless it’s union-built. Then it’s $7,500. Tax credits, by the way, are more valuable than deductions. They subtract from the actual taxes you owe.
“Trump’s proposed 20% tariff on imports–60% on Chinese goods–would function as a highly regressive national sales tax, costing the poorest families nearly 6% of their income while the rich would pay just 1.4%,” ITEP says. It’s another reason the poorest fifth, who earn $28,600 or less per year, would be the biggest proportional losers under Trump’s tax plan.
The rich would benefit from Trump’s corporate tax cuts, too, ITEP reveals. His corporate tax cuts of eight years ago reduced firms’ top tax rate from 35% to 21%. He wants to cut it to 20%, except for “companies that make their product in America.” They would have a 15% rate.
Each top earner would garner another $7,380 from that corporate cut. The next 4% would get $600. The yearly gains for the middle class are middling–$50 or less–and the poorest fifth get zip.
Trump would keep one tax hike his law imposed eight years ago: The cap on the itemized deduction for state and local income taxes. News stories at the time specifically quoted Trump as saying he wanted to kill that deduction to hurt voters in rich, blue states—he named California, New York, Illinois, Maryland, and New Jersey—which Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton won.
“The American people deserve to know how nationally proposed policies would impact their wallets and our economy,” says Kass, the Americans for Tax Fairness chief.
Manufactures the facts
To cover up all that and more, including his anti-union and anti-worker plans, Trump manufactures facts, makes huge mistakes, and airs a catalog of personal grievances. In just one week, starting October 9, here are some of Trump’s more notable allegations, courtesy of the Washington Post:
- Trump’s foe, Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, “didn’t send anyone or anything at all” to Hurricane Helene victims in Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas. Top Trump aide Steven Miller, a notorious hater of migrants, said in a campaign speech that hurricane aid went to “illegal aliens.” The governors of those four states said both claims are false. Three are Republicans.
- “Over 13,000 illegal alien murderers are roaming free in our country…released from jail from all over the world.” Some are in gangs “taking over apartment buildings in Colorado.”
Data show that 13,000 undocumented people were imprisoned for violent crimes, including murders, over the last 40 years. Those that aren’t still locked up were deported. And the mayor of Aurora, Colo., calls the takeover a myth.
- In an outright error, Trump declared former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom he met with often while in the White House “was thrown out after a year.” Merkel served 16 years.
- “Inflation is out of control” and “it’s the highest it’s ever been.” Inflation rose at an annual rate of 2.4% last month and just over 3% in the last 12 months. Median weekly pay—the point where half the country is above and half below—rose by 4%, beating inflation. Inflation’s also not “the highest it’s ever been.” The Carter administration’s average “stagflation” was 9.9%. Peak: 13%.
- Teachers and schools change children’s gender, which is a slam at transgender people—a favorite GOP social issue target, and at teachers, a favorite foe of the radical right. Past versions of this sexist lie include Republican “bathroom bills” and bans on boys playing on girls’ sports teams. Some local school districts tell teachers to use whatever gender each student prefers.
- The Democrats are responsible for the two assassination attempts against Trump. He told a second crowd in Butler, Pa., site of the first try, that the Dems “slandered me, impeached me, indicted me, tried to throw me off the ballot and—who knows?—maybe even tried to kill me.”
The House impeached Trump twice, once for obstruction of justice and—basically—blackmailing Ukrainian President Vladymyr Zelensky to provide Trump with dirt on Joe Biden. The second time was for ordering, aiding and abetting the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol invasion, insurrection, and attempted Trumpite coup d’etat. The evenly split Senate failed to convict Trump both times. Conviction needs a two-thirds vote.
The Colorado Supreme Court ruled for using the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment’s “Jeff Davis clause” to throw Trump off the GOP primary ballot there, saying anyone who took the oath of office and later rebelled against the U.S. could not hold elected U.S. office again. The Trump-infested U.S. Supreme Court majority overruled the Coloradans. The Butler, Pa., assassin was a registered Republican. Police killed him. The Secret Service captured the second suspect before he fired a shot.
- “I created the greatest economy ever.” When Trump left the White House, the economy was in the tank, joblessness was in double digits, and millions of businesses—from small family restaurants to major department store chains—closed permanently due to his mismanagement of responses to the coronavirus pandemic. Trump became the first president since Herbert Hoover to see the economy lose jobs during his term.
Maybe we should call all this “the fog of lies.”
CONTRIBUTOR
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