Trump Using Millions of Devastated Hurricane Victims to Push for His Tax Cuts for the Wealthy

President Heads to Florida Thursday

President Donald Trump is using the millions of people in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Georgia, and surrounding areas devastated by Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma to push his nonexistent tax cut bill. Angered by having had not a single major legislative win, Trump has shifted gears, telling Republicans to stop trying to repeal and replace ObamaCare, and summoning supporters to institute tax cuts.

“With Irma and Harvey devastation, Tax Cuts and Tax Reform is needed more than ever before. Go Congress, go!” Trump tweeted Tuesday morning. “The approval process for the biggest Tax Cut & Tax Reform package in the history of our country will soon begin. Move fast Congress!” he added.

Sandwiched between those two tweets was this one:

There actually is no tax cut or tax reform package. There have been various proposals, and the Trump White House earlier this year claimed they were working hard to put one together, but recently they have admitted they will rely on Congress to pound one together. It is extraordinarily unusual for a White House to have little desire to shape major policy and agenda legislation.

Like the failed ObamaCare repeal bills, the GOP’s proposed tax cuts would benefit the richest Americans the most. 

“The White House says it’s focused on a middle-class tax cut,” the financial news site TheStreet reported in July. “One new analysis says that’s not the case unless you define ‘middle class’ as the ultra-wealthy.”

“Most of Trump’s tax cuts,” Quartz reported two weeks ago, “would go to taxpayers making over $599,300 a year.”

And a headline from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reads: “Trump Tax Plan Would Give 400 Highest-Income Americans More Than $15 Million a Year in Tax Cuts.”

On Twitter, many noted that Trump’s urgings are nonsensical. The cost to the federal government to help support rebuilding efforts after both hurricanes will likely be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. 

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Image: Official DHS photo by Barry Bahler via Flickr

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