New Poll Finds Just 1 in 6 Americans Believe Their Taxes Will Be Going Down
Tax the working class. Americans are skeptical of Republican claims that the Republican tax plan will spur economic growth. A recent Quinnipiac survey found that fewer than 1 in 6 Americans expect their taxes to be reduced while more than twice that many expect their taxes to go up.
Republicans will be trying to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the tax cut for the rich that will cost our country $1.5 trillion while they have not been able to find the $15 billion, or 1% of the costs of the Republican tax package, for the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) justified the tax cuts because “not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”
College presidents say that tax proposals would make college, especially graduate school, more expensive and further out of reach for low- and middle-income families.
Foreclosures for seniors. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s bank ramped up its foreclosures of homes owned by senior citizens in the months before he joined the Trump administration.
Mnuchin once headed the parent company of Financial Freedom Senior Funding which foreclosed on an average of 777 homes a month between April and December 2016. Freedom Financial was a division of the Mnuchin-run OneWest Bank which merged with the CIT Group in 2015.
In May, the company paid $89 million to settle claims brought by the Department of Justice that it bilked taxpayers out of mortgage insurance through fraudulent foreclosures. After being sworn in as treasury secretary, Mnuchin sold his stock in the company, taking in at least $38 million and perhaps as much as $162 million. He also received $11 million in severance.
Shrink public lands. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) was trying to kill off Bears Ears before the 1.35 million acres in southeastern Utah even became a national monument. Five days after Trump took office, Hatch met with him in the Oval Office and talked about Bears Ears. Hatch’s support for Ryan Zinke when he was nominated to head the Interior Department was based on “his willingness to work with our congressional delegation to help us clean up the mess the Obama administration created in San Juan County,” Hatch said at the time. Hatch’s office floated the idea of Zinke reviewing other national monuments. Trump is expected to shave more than a million acres each from Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, the largest removal of public-lands protection in U.S. history.