Why Reward Bad Corporate Behavior with More Tax Breaks?

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Trumps tax plan is truly golden: for the super-rich, that is, as they’ll get all the big tax breaks.

As anyone who has ever been to any of the many cities that are graced with a Trump hotel, casino, golf resort, etc. likely knows, Donald Trump insists that his name be gaudily displayed in giant letters across every structure he owns — preferably in gold.

Now, he’s taken ownership of a massive new structure that’ll reach across all of America, and he might not want his name slapped all over this one. It’s Trump’s towering redo of our country’s tax law — and, no surprise, his plan is truly golden. For the super-rich, that is, revealing in hard numbers whom his presidency really serves: Not just the 1 percent, but especially the 1-percent-of-the-1-percent who are multimillionaires and billionaires… like — guess who? — him.

First and foremost, the Trump tax plan slashes the payments that giant corporations make to support our nation. He claims that this will let corporate elites raise the wages of workers and create jobs, winking at the fact that, of course, the elites will pocket every dime of Trump’s tax giveaways. And he doesn’t mention a little secret gotcha: A third of his corporate benefits would go to foreign owners of American corporations.

Meanwhile, Trump’s luxurious new tax structure eliminates many benefits for middle class families, such as tax deductions for medical expenses, college tuition and interest paid on student loans. He wants modest-income families to pay more, so he can eliminate current taxes on his own uber-rich family, including killing the alternative income tax paid by the rich and the estate tax.

Did I mention that the gilded tax structure proposed by this self-described business genius would hang an additional $1.5 trillion debt around our children’s necks? No surprise, for Trump’s grandiose luxury projects were often built with other people’s money, advancing himself before he slipped away, leaving others to grapple with the bankruptcy.

Here’s a question you might want to ask our Trumpestuous President and his mousey Trumpeteers in Congress: “Why are you even considering giving more tax breaks to corporate giants?”

First, the self-serving corporate class is wallowing in warehouses of wealth, greedily hoarding it in offshore tax shelters and stock-buyback schemes, refusing to invest their unconscionable profits to benefit the vast majority of people they’ve been knocking down and holding down.

Second, you shouldn’t give away our public treasury when our nation has a budget deficit and faces a frightening backlog of crying needs for public investment — from our deteriorating infrastructure to our disappearing middle class.

Third, our people’s sense of equality and social unity has been severely fractured by 30 years of gross wealth inequality, so intentionally widening the wealth gap is criminally stupid and dangerous.
Fourth, why would you think over-paid, over-pampered CEOs deserve more pampering? They’ve become imperious potentates who feel entitled to gouge, cheat, defraud, lie and otherwise run over us commoners.

Consider Jeff Immelt, who resigned as the imperial CEO of General Electric until this June. Not only did he have a fleet of corporate jets to fly him around, but we now learn that when this royal chief jetted here or there, he had a second jet, called a “chase plane,” follow right behind him. Jet Number Two carried no passengers or equipment; it was just a spare in case his highness needed it for… well for what? GE offers no reasonable answer, because there isn’t one. Immelt says he never used the spare, but there it was, zipping along behind him costing GE shareholders thousands of dollars an hour.

This pompous waste cost you and me, too, for GE got a tax deduction for every flight Jeff’s chase plane made. Why would Trump & Company reward such common corporate rip-offs with more tax breaks?

Jim Hightower
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