Las Vegas Sun

March 18, 2024

EDITORIAL:

GOP’s let-them-eat cake policies betray working class

Let’s say you got an 8.5 percent pay raise last year.

Would you be happy?

Now, let’s say that nice little 8.5 percent raise jacked your annual income up to $11.5 million in salary, stock and other compensation.

Now, would you be happy? Or would you want more tax cuts for you and your fellow 1 percenters?

Those compensation numbers aren’t pulled out of thin air; they come from an Associated Press examination showing that the median annual income for 346 CEOs of the nation’s largest companies went up last year. The study further showed that median CEO pay has gone up 19.6 percent over the past five years, nearly double the 10.9 percent raise for the average full-time worker over that time.

So these are very good times for the wealthiest Americans, and yet the Republican-controlled Congress and President Donald Trump seem to think there’s no such thing as enough for those at the top of the income brackets.

The GOP’s various health bills have all featured tax cuts or tax deductions for the very rich, all at the cost of coverage for those who aren’t as able to afford it. Meanwhile, the tax reform blueprint that Trump rolled out in April was a carton of golden eggs for the wealthy, eliminating the estate tax, providing a tax break to investors who earn more than $200,000 a year and axing an Obamacare surcharge on wealthy investors, among other measures, while cutting funding for the working class through reductions in Medicaid, federal worker retirement programs and food stamps.

For any Trump supporters who may still be with us, are you feeling betrayed yet? You have every reason to be, unless you’re rich. Yes, Trump and the GOP are examining tax cuts for the middle class as well, but what they’ve offered so far would end up being regressive considering how much they want to provide for the wealthy.

And that includes Trump and his family, who would directly benefit from some of the proposals that have been floated in Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile, the gap between the super-wealthy and average wage-earners is ballooning. A CEO making the median compensation last year raked in $265 for every $1 earned by a full-time worker making the median earnings in the U.S. — about $43,300, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Compare that with 1980, when the ratio was 42-to-1.

But that was before the conservative right rose to prominence with its anti-union and pro-corporate mindset.

Now comes Trump and a congressional leadership team that is hell-bent on enacting major tax cuts for the rich before the 2018 midterm elections, which, based on Trump’s dismal approval ratings, could result in a Republican bloodbath and close the window on their opportunities to feather their wealthy donors’ nests.

Their zeal can be measured in their health bills, on which they were perfectly willing to absorb a storm of criticism mostly about Medicaid reductions but also about the tax cuts. Thanks to a brave few who held out, only one of their four bills has passed, but there’s no question they’ll keep swinging for the fences.

They shouldn’t have an opportunity.

When it’s time to go to the polls, middle- and lower-income voters should remember how much the GOP was willing to sell them out.

The rich should have an opportunity to get richer, but in a democracy, the people who play by the rules and work hard should be given a level playing field.

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