Rich get richer, pandemic notwithstanding

If you don’t believe our government is controlled by the rich and well-connected for their benefit, including Trump, his family and associates, why else did they receive a bailout? As part of the economic rescue package, CARES, the federal government is giving away $174 billion in temporary tax breaks overwhelmingly to rich individuals and large companies. The emergency relief that Congress passed is riddled with giveaways to the super rich, including some tax breaks only for companies making more than $25 million a year, and capital gains tax cuts for households making more than $500,000 a year.

While the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, another massive wealth transfer from working people to the already-rich (you remember, don’t you, the one that was going to pay for itself?), had some restrictions on how many tax breaks a single person could receive, Republicans have used the coronavirus relief package to strip away the limitations embedded in the $1.5 trillion tax cut law. In order to keep the law’s overall cost down, it imposed a number of restrictions on who could take advantage of certain tax breaks and how much those taxpayers could receive. Now, with the 2020 rescue package, Congress temporarily repealed a number of those limitations. The bottom line is that, barely two years after Congressional Republicans and Trump lavished America’s wealthiest families and companies with a series of lucrative tax cuts, those same beneficiaries are now receiving a second gift. The Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan arm of Congress, calculates that 80 percent of the tax cuts in the coronavirus relief legislation will go to people making more than $1 million a year – just 43,000 people – and will cost $90 billion in 2020 alone.

Among the possible beneficiaries of the changes are real estate investors in Trump’s inner circle. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, likely didn’t pay federal income taxes for several years because of paper losses generated by depreciating his companies’ properties despite his substantial wealth and earnings from other sources. Trump has also reported large losses on his tax returns – a 1995 tax return published by The New York Times showed nearly $916 million in losses – which could have allowed him to avoid paying any federal income taxes for almost two decades. The 2017 tax law restricted both their abilities to realize tax savings through only-on-paper losses, but with those limits likely to be lifted, Trump, Kushner, and other wealthy real estate developers have the potential to reduce their tax bills significantly.

Trump’s associates have also benefited from CARES. For example, Ashford Hospitality Trust, a large group of hotel chains, received $96.1 million in low-interest loans, the largest amount received by any company under the program; the hotels are run by Trump donor Monty Bennett, who gave $548,000 to Republican candidates and groups this election cycle.

“The Trump administration was in a position to clean up the tax code and promised to get rid of some of the complexity that certain taxpayers use to their advantage,” said Victor Fleischer, tax law professor at the University of California Irvine. “Instead, they doubled down on those provisions, particularly the ones they have familiarity with to benefit themselves.”

You can call me a socialist, but if the fact that the top 90 percent hog the benefits isn’t cause for economic and political reform, then what else could be?

Could there be a Republicans for Biden group forming? With less than six months until the election, there are already a number of Republicans and ex-Republicans who have said they intend to vote for Biden. Former CEO of Hewlett-Packard Carly Fiorina, who ran against Trump in the 2016 primaries, remarked that she “cannot vote for Donald Trump in 2020,” and is considering the possibility of not voting. Rick Tyler, who served as Senator Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) communications director during his 2016 presidential campaign said, “People say how can you support Biden? I don’t want Biden to be president. I don’t want Trump to be president. Am I willing to have Biden be president so Trump won’t be president? You’re damn right I am.”

Andrew J. Bacevich is a retired Army colonel, professor emeritus at the Boston University School of Global Studies, specializing in international relations, security studies, American foreign policy, and American diplomatic and military history. In his anthology, American Conservatism: Reclaiming an Intellectual Tradition, he wrote, “Donald Trump is not a conservative. Nor are the leaders of the Republican Party over which Trump presides. Prominent GOP figures such as Kentucky senator Mitch McConnell seem to adhere to no worldview worthy of the name. As for the provocateurs who inhabit the sprawling universe of rightwing media, their principal motive is not to promote genuine conservative values but to rabble-rouse and line their own pockets. Indeed, allowing Trump, McConnell, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh et al. to present themselves as exemplary conservatives testifies to the pervasive corruption of contemporary American political discourse.”

Well said, colonel.

Mark Berg is a community activist in Adams County and a proud Liberal. His email address is MABerg175@Comcast.net.