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December 18, 2017 08:09 AM UTC

Echoing Trump, Gardner says passage of tax bill will be a "great Christmas celebration across the country"

  • 18 Comments
  • by: Jason Salzman

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Sounding much like Trump, who last week called the Republican tax bill “one of the great Christmas gifts to middle-income people,” U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) told a conservative radio listeners Friday:

Gardner: “And what a great Christmas celebration across the country, as we pass a bill that would grow wages, cut taxes, and get this country competitive again.”

On Saturday, the New York Times reported that, in fact, the GOP tax bill will not deliver Christmas gifts equally to all Americans:

“But the fine print [of the tax bill] reveals that some will get a much nicer gift than others, the benefits will change over time, and some will be left out in the cold,” reports the Times. “Real estate developers and technology companies could see big tax cuts, while low-income households and people buying health insurance could lose out.”

I left a message for Gardner, asking why he and Trump could believe the tax bill will be such a great Christmas gift for Americans, even when independent analyses and most Americans think otherwise.

He didn’t return my call but fortunately KHOW 630-AM host Ross Kaminsky put the question to Gardner in a slightly different way on Friday, asking why the ill-informed public doesn’t understand how great the Republican bill is.

Kaminsky: One of the key things I think you and I both have been frustrated with for years is that even when the GOP is on the right side of the issue, the public doesn’t seem to understand it that well.  And the tax bill, for example, it doesn’t poll nearly as well as I think it should. And I wonder what you think Republicans, conservatives can do to improve the public understanding, to turn a positive economic thing into also a positive political thing.

Gardner: You know, over the ten day course of the tax bill debate it went from being “some people opposed to it because they thought they didn’t like tax cuts” to “this is going to kill thousands of people” to “this is the biblical end of times and the rapture is just around the corner”. I think those kinds of hyperbole and rhetoric have gone completely over the top. And when, next year, when American workers are starting to see tax relief in their home, in their household…the fear of, you know, the Biblical times is simply not going to materialize.

As the tax bill has moved through Congress, Gardner has dodged answering specific questions about it, including whether he believes taxes should be cut for those earning $1 million or more.

Asked last month by a conservative radio host whether he supported such a cut for the super rich, Gardner said:

Gardner: “Look, I’d like to see tax relief. I’d like to see us do the most powerful thing we can when it comes to policy to drive this economy, and I’m going to make my decisions on what I support based on that lens.” (here at 9:35)

It turns out the tax bill heading toward passage this week lowers taxes on top income earners. Gardner has not objected to this provision.

Other tax-bill “winners” listed by the Times include “President Trump and his Family,” “Big Corporations,” “Multimillionaires,” “Private Equity Managers,” and “Tax Accountants and Lawyers.”

The “losers” listed by the Times include: “People Buying Health Insurance,” “Individual Taxpayers in the Future,” “the Elderly,” “Low-Income Families,” and “Puerto Rico.”

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18 thoughts on “Echoing Trump, Gardner says passage of tax bill will be a “great Christmas celebration across the country””

    1. Real estate moguls like presents, too!  

      Merry Effin’ Xmas, boys . . . 

      https://newrepublic.com/minutes/146338/bob-corkers-flip-flop-tax-reform-sure-seems-fishy

      You gotta’ love these Corwardly GOPers . . . 

      “Senator/Representative Shithead is currently carefully reading the details of the tax bill to determine whether his voting “yes” is in the best interests of his many constituents.”

      ”Seanator/Representative Shithead was unaware of any details or provisions in the tax bill that might personally benefit him; he’s only read the Mnuchin one-page summary.”

       Nobody here even thought to give any of our GOPer boys a copy of “The Evelyn Woodhead Sped Redding Course” last Xmas???!???

  2. It's a Christmas gift.  Do people give out flaming bags of dog shit as Christmas gifts?  That's what this is like.

     

    So glad we have a Senator who listens to all of his constituents and doesn't shy away from tough questions. /s

  3. Apologies for the badly formatted chart.  From the New York Times:

    A Tax Plan to Turbocharge Inequality, in 3 Charts

    Over the last few decades, the rich have not only enjoyed the largest pre-tax raises, by far. They have also received big tax cuts. The middle class and poor, meanwhile, have suffered from slow-growing incomes — and from overall tax rates that are higher today than in the mid-1960s.

    Now President Trump, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are trying to widen inequality even further. Their tax bill doesn’t touch the payroll-tax rate — again, the single biggest tax that most households pay. The bill does cut income taxes for the middle class, but only modestly and only temporarily. The tax cuts benefiting the wealthy, including cuts to the inheritance tax and the corporate tax, are much larger and permanent.

    Researchers at the Tax Policy Center, a vital source of independent analysis on a plan that’s been rushed through Congress, have estimated the long-term effects on each income group. Crucially, their estimates don’t ignore the bill’s impact on the deficit — and thus include the spending cuts that will eventually need to follow. Even if those cuts fall equally on each household (and, in reality, Republican leaders favor cuts that fall disproportionately on the middle class and poor), the tax bill amounts to an enormous effort to increase inequality.

    Change in after-tax income under tax bill, 2027

    Top 0.1

    Top 10  

    Middle 40

    Bottom 50

    +3.0%

    1.5

    -0.6

    -2.0

     

    By The New York Times | Note: Includes effect of spending cuts from deficit reduction. Source: Estimate based on data from William Gale, Surachai Khitatrakun and Aaron Krupkin

    Republican leaders have evidently decided that most Americans deserve more of what they’ve had over the past few decades — more income stagnation and more inequality. Polls have repeatedly shown that most Americans disagree, but Congress is forging ahead anyway. It’s an affront that deserves to be a defining issue in next year’s midterm campaigns.

  4. Con Man Cory's playbook from the original Supply-side propagandist:

    How Republicans Learned to Sell Tax Cuts for the Rich

    If anyone still believed that the Republican Party had become a party of economic populism, the tax bill that the party is set to pass in Congress will burst their bubble. This bill raises taxes on the poor and cuts taxes on the rich. Most of the American people disapprove.

    Senate Republicans negotiated in secret at top speed, and then passed the bill at 1:50 a.m. on a Saturday, as if to minimize public scrutiny. The original American populists were the men and women of the Populist Party who demanded open government and income taxes on the rich; this tax bill is exactly the sort of thing that made them howl in outrage.

    But the Republican tax strategy has roots in the American populist tradition, too. That strategy is to disregard experts and rile up the base with tax policy arguments that would not survive professional scrutiny.

    Opponents of this tax bill should embrace that vision of democracy and reclaim their own populist roots. It will not be hard. The tax bill pays for corporate tax cuts by increasing individual income taxes on poor and middle-class Americans in the long run. That tax increase will make people hopping mad. Another wave of economic populism is coming, and people who favor progressive taxation should not retreat to the seminar room.

    1. Those hands are MUCH too big and Trump would not be that close to a low class dog …

      and I don't think there is any chance for Trump to have an epiphany and have a heart grow 3 sizes on ANY day.

  6. Elections have consequences…..

    In addition to thanking Bob Corker and Cory Gardner, we need to also thank all the Jill Stein supporters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin who stood true to their principles.

    We also need to thank all those LWNJ who were happy to see us Democrats purge ourselves of those impurities in our party (Mary Landrieu, Bob Kerrey, Mark Pryor, and Evan Bayh). Instead of holding 52 Senate seats, we have 48.

    Instead of having Ron Wyden as Senate Finance Committee chair, we have Orrin Hatch.

    Extremism in the defense of equal access to free stuff is no vice, moderation in the pursuit of economic justice is no virtue.

    1. Your comment would make sense if those moderate Democrats had lost primaries to Bernie Bros instead of general elections to Republican challengers. Democrats didn't purge them, Republican voters did.

  8. Just another typical day of what Republicans think of as "governing":

    Republicans wrote their massive tax legislation in such a rush that even before they’ve sent it to the president’s desk, they’re already talking about writing another bill to fix all the mistakes in the first one.

    Steven Rosenthal, a lawyer and tax expert who formerly worked for the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, said he was not aware of any other instance in which lawmakers anticipated technical corrections for tax legislation that had not even been enacted.

    “This legislation is tax policy malfeasance,” Rosenthal said.

    They could just as easily have scribbled gibberish on a cocktail napkin and stuck it under Trump's nose to sign, since they are so desperate for a "win". 

    Trump wouldn't know the difference, and wouldn't care even if he did.

    2. The tricky thing about "fixing the mistakes" — it will take 60 votes in the Senate (unless there is an abandonment of the legislative filibuster). How does anyone game out a scenario where Democrats, with 49 votes, lose nine who decide they want to bail out the Republicans on their rushed process?

      1. I think the Republicans would try to load the fix up bill with their top RWNJ ideological wet dreams as they do with all legislation, and then if Democrats don't go along, they'll say it's our fault that everyone's taxes go up when the cuts expire except for the ultra wealthy.

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