‘Really Inexcusable’: Progressives Lament Democrats’ Failure to Reverse Trump Tax Cuts
Not a single Democrat in either the House or the Senate voted yes in 2017 when Republicans and then-President Donald Trump—hellbent on delivering big for their wealthy donors—rammed through legislation that slashed the corporate tax rate to 21% and lowered the top marginal rate for the richest people in the United States.
But despite the law’s deep unpopularity with the American public, it remains largely intact five years later even as Democrats—many of whom campaigned on reversing some or all of the regressive GOP tax law—narrowly control Congress and the presidency.
The persistence of the Trump tax law, which delivered a massive windfall to the rich and corporate forces that helped shape the measure, has drawn growing attention in recent days as Democrats head into the crucial November midterms having failed to pass the bulk of their domestic policy agenda, largely due to the obstruction of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).
Amy Hanauer, executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, echoed that assessment in an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, calling Democrats’ failure to undo the Trump tax cuts “a crushing defeat in a lot of ways—and really inexcusable.”
On the campaign trail in 2020, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden vowed to “get rid of the bulk of Trump’s $2 trillion tax cut,” which the Democratic contender criticized as “irresponsible.”
Now, a year and a half into his presidency, Biden and his party are barreling toward the November midterms with their congressional majority at stake and that promise unfulfilled. Democrats argue that given Manchin and Sinema’s obstruction, they need a larger majority in the Senate to pass their agenda, including repeal of the tax law.
“If the question is where do Democrats go from here, it feels like the short answer is nowhere,” Vanessa Williamson, a senior fellow and tax expert at the Brookings Institution, told the Journal. “You can’t just keep asking people to vote harder. If a party is in power, people expect them to be able to achieve the things they want to achieve.”
Originally published at Commondreams.org.