Democrats Are Being Dishonest About Extending Tax Cuts

It’s Tax Day in the United States. “Republicans believe every day is the Fourth of July, but the Democrats believe every day is April 15,” President Ronald Reagan quipped during his 1984 reelection campaign. But Tax Day will be much worse next year if Republicans don’t extend our signature 2017 legislation—the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—and Democrats are trying to deceive the American people about the impact.

The Left’s lies about the act are nothing new. The New York Times noted in 2019 that most Americans received a tax cut from the 2017 tax reform but simply didn’t believe it.

“To a large degree, the gap between perception and reality on the tax cuts appears to flow from a sustained—and misleading—effort by liberal opponents of the law to brand it as a broad middle-class tax increase,” the paper wrote.

The New York Times was right, but Democrats continued the drumbeat of deceit.

Then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi claimed middle-class Americans would only receive “crumbs” from the bill. Those “crumbs” equated to lower taxes, higher wages, and bonuses.

In 2019, then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris tweeted that because average tax refunds were down about $170, the law must be a tax hike. The Washington Post had to correct her, noting, “The size of the tax refund has no bearing on whether a person’s taxes rose or fell. A person might end up giving less of their income to the IRS—and still end up with a smaller tax refund.” In other words, Americans enjoyed lower taxes throughout the entire year, not just on April 15.

And in 2021, then-House Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries told MSNBC, “83% of the benefits went to the wealthiest 1%, and they saddled us with approximately $2 trillion in debt to subsidize the lifestyle of the rich and shameless.”

The statement was so bad, The Washington Post upgraded its fact check from two “Pinocchios” to three and called it a “zombie claim.” That’s because Jeffries and Democrats were relying on projections of what would happen after significant provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act expired—the same provisions Republicans are trying to save and Democrats are trying to stop.

To be clear: Democrats were and are criticizing Republicans by using future projections when some Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions expire while doing everything they can to stop us from extending the provisions that would prevent that scenario.

Since 2017, the flow of misinformation has convinced a broad swath of Americans that they didn’t receive a tax cut—which they did—and the same cast of deceivers is trying to dupe Americans by promoting the extension of the law as a tax giveaway for millionaires and billionaires—which it isn’t.

The 2019 Washington Post article asserted that 91% of Americans in the middle quintile received a tax cut and that, according to the Cato Institute, “The largest share of the tax changes goes to the middle-income quintile” when payroll taxes are excluded—a direct rebuttal to the Left’s argument and a good reason to keep the law’s provisions in place.

Here are the facts.

The average American will see a 22% tax hike if we don’t extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The law resulted in a 16% tax cut for Americans earning less than $100,000, while the top 1% increased their share paid into the U.S. Treasury from 44.9% to 45.9% from 2017 to 2019. Additionally, American workers in the bottom 10% of income earners saw 50% higher wage growth than the top 10%. If Congress permanently extends the law, America’s gross domestic product is expected to increase by 1.2%, and an estimated 829,000 full-time equivalent jobs will be supported.

Democrats aren’t just lying about the law’s beneficiaries—they’re also twisting the truth about the impact on the Treasury.

The Congressional Budget Office painted a grim picture of future tax receipts to the Treasury when the law passed in 2017. While we’ve certainly witnessed a growing national debt over the last decade, since 2017, annual revenues into the Treasury have increased 48%. At the same time, federal spending has ballooned 70%. Revenues have actually remained close to their pre-Tax Cuts and Jobs Act trend when adjusting for inflation, but it’s Washington’s spending that’s been out of control.

Allowing Americans to keep more of their money and implementing pro-growth tax policies for small businesses meant more money into the Treasury despite other bad policies coming out of Washington.

Today, Republicans are fighting two battles—passing the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act extensions with a narrow majority and pushing back on Democrats’ dishonesty. If we win the first battle, Democrats will likely still make the false claim that our extensions only benefited the top 1%. If we don’t extend the law, April 15 will be more miserable for all Americans, and the Left will likely still blame Republicans for not passing a bill they lied about and fought against.

Regardless of the Left’s lies, the GOP will do what’s right to extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act for American families and small businesses, so we don’t experience Tax Day all year long.

We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.

The post Democrats Are Being Dishonest About Extending Tax Cuts appeared first on The Daily Signal.