The past few days have been absolutely fucking nuts. Donald Trump promised to defund Social Security and Medicare if reelected, accelerated his work to destroy the U.S. Postal Service in advance of the 2020 election, and once again claimed wrongly that it was him, and not Barack Obama, who signed “Vetrans Choice” into law. Oh — and speaking of him taking credit for things that Obama had actually done — he also stood in front of the overwhelmingly white and maskless members of his Bedminster golf club and announced that he was thinking about signing an executive order requiring insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions, something that, as we all know, the Affordable Care Act already does. As I don’t have time to get into everything, what do you say we spend our time today talking about the defunding of Social Security and Medicare? And maybe we can discuss the gutting of the Postal Service tomorrow. Sound good?
Yesterday, Donald Trump signed an executive order that he said would defer all payroll tax payments between September and December for those making less than $104,000 per year. [Payroll taxes, for those of you who don’t know, are what funds Social Security and Medicare.] Furthermore, he said that, if he were to be reelected, he would “terminate” payroll taxes altogether, which, by extension, would effectively roll back the New Deal. The following excerpt comes by way of the Washington Post.
…Another document signed by Trump on Saturday attempts to defer payroll tax payments from September through December for people who earn less than $100,000. The impact of this measure could depend on whether companies decide to comply, as they could be responsible for withdrawing large amounts of money from their employees’ paychecks in a few months when the taxes are due.
The president said that if he wins reelection, he would seek to extend the deferral and somehow “terminate” the taxes that are owed. He also dared presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to try to recoup those tax dollars if elected in November. The payroll tax funds Social Security and Medicare benefits, and it’s unclear where those programs will get funding if the taxes are deferred…
As it’s the constitutional role of Congress to set policy when it comes to taxing and spending, it’s not certain that yesterday’s executive actions will hold up in court. [Both Republican Senator Ben Sasse and Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, have referred to these executive orders of Trump’s as “unconstitutional slop.”] It’s also unclear how, assuming this should go forward, this plan of Trump’s would work in practice, as these deferred taxes would still be due in January. Right now, employers are required to withhold payroll taxes from the paychecks of their employees each pay period, kicking in another 6.2% on top. Would they continue to withhold those funds from the checks of their employees over this four month period, or would they just take a giant lump sum at the end of the four month period, which could be financially devastating for families living paycheck to paycheck? Either way, it’s difficult to see how his would have any tangible positive effect on the lives of working men and women. Unless, of course, the objective is never to require that these deferred taxes be paid, which is what Trump hinted at yesterday, when he said that, if reelected, he’d end the payroll tax system altogether.
Here, if you’d like to read it, is a link the actual text of what Trump signed. I’ve read it a few times now, and there doesn’t seem to be any mention of how this would effect the funding of Social Security and Medicare. Here’s the take of Princeton economist Paul Krugman.
It looks as though, with Trump falling fast in swing state polling, and Coronavirus deaths climbing, the Republicans have decided to go for broke, and try one last time to destroy our social safety net, arguing that it’s necessary due to the pandemic and the subsequent economic collapse. [The Democrats, in sharp contrast, are pushing for an extension of the $600 weekly unemployment payments that begun in March as part of the CARES Act. Trump, in his executive orders, called for $400 a week in unemployment payments, but with the understanding that our beleaguered state governments would cover 25%, which would push them further down the road to collapse.] The idea, it seems pretty clear, is to call for a payroll tax deferral now, arguing that businesses and workers need the money, and thereby laying the groundwork for an argument in January about how these same businesses and workers can’t possibly be expected to come up with the funds that they owe, necessitating deep cuts in social safety net programs, and transferring billions of dollars to corporate America in the process.
Here, with more on the Republican endgame, is something I posted here back in June of 2018 under the title, “Ever feel like drowning America in the bathtub? Here’s the plan.”
…The report, titled Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century, lays out the Trump administration’s aggressive plan for reorganizing (a.k.a. shrinking) the United States government.
As for what’s in this report, it’s essentially the wish list of the Republican right, as so honestly articulated back at the turn of the century by “small government” jihadist Grover Norquist, the founder and president of the Americans for Tax Reform. “I don’t want to abolish government,” Norquist stated in a May 25, 2001 interview with NPR’s Morning Edition. “I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” And that’s essentially what Trump and his budget director, Mick Mulvaney, have presented in this plan, which was clearly written with the input of wealthy Republican donors like Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers. It’s a detailed roadmap showing how, through the drastic consolidation federal departments, the dramatic rollback of regulation, and the elimination of social safety net programs, the U.S. government can be weakened to the point that, when held below the surface of the water, it can no longer fight back.
When asked about the plan late last week by reporters, Donald Trump laughed, saying that it was “extraordinarily boring,” the suggestion being that our time might be better spent elsewhere. And, if you read it, you can see why he’d rather that people talk about anything else. It’s a plan that would, quite literally, lead to the deaths of American citizens. And I say that without hyperbole.
Here, to give you some sense of what you’ll find within the plan, are a series of tweets from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Laurie Garrett.
While it may be unlikely that a bill like this would make it through Congress, we need to take notice, as this is clearly their plan for the future. This, assuming things continue to go their way, is where the Republicans want to take America. So don’t be distracted by the chaos. Don’t spend too much time fretting over the fact that Donald Trump is hanging out with Corey “Womp Womp” Lewandowski just a few days after the latter mocked a 10-year-old illegal immigrant with Down syndrome who had been separated from her mother at the border, or pissed that Stephen Miller, the White House author of the child separation policy, is out there in the world, attempting to eat Mexican food. None of it is real. These are all just attempts on the part of the administration to get us talking about anything other than their judicial appointments, their increasingly cruel and racist policies, and these “extraordinarily boring” government restructuring plans that they’ve started floating. This is always been their endgame, and now, with the Trump administration headed toward impeachment, they intend to give it their best shot.
And that’s what this payroll tax deferment says to me. It says that they’re ready to try one last time to wrestle the American government into the bathtub.
Before we move on, I think it’s important to document the fact that Republicans, now that one of their own is in the White House, are describing executive orders as being the work of the Lord. [They, you can be sure, were not saying this when Obama was president.]
One last quote, while we’re on the subject. This comes from Senator Bernie Sanders, who, I believe, will be speaking at Biden’s nomination convention in a few weeks. “Today, Trump announced that if he is re-elected he will permanently defund Social Security,” Sanders said. “That may make sense to the billionaires at his country club, but it makes zero sense to me. No, Mr. President. We will not let you destroy Social Security. We will defeat you – badly.”
Oh, and Trump, in these executive actions of his, also ordered that $44 billion be taken away from FEMA, in the middle of a pandemic that has already killed over 165,000 Americans. And there’s still no national testing program for COVID-19.
OK, as I’m still awake, here’s one more thing. Trump said yesterday that his executive orders extended the federal eviction moratorium. They did not.
