The Other 99%
Trickle Down Economics: America's Longest-Running Scam
PCB Commentary
For more than four decades, Republicans have been promising Americans that if we just make the rich a little richer, prosperity will eventually find its way to everyone else.
Ronald Reagan called it supply-side economics. The rest of us came to know it as trickle-down economics.
And we've been waiting for the trickle ever since.
Meanwhile, millions of Americans work long hours and still struggle to pay the bills. Parents juggle two jobs to provide for their children. Families postpone medical care because they can't afford it.
These are the people who make America run. They build our homes, care for our children, teach in our schools and keep our hospitals operating.
And what do they get from Washington?
Another tax cut for millionaires and billionaires.
There's something particularly cruel about telling a working mother that the country can't afford to help feed her children while finding billions more in tax breaks for people with private jets and multiple mansions.
Reagan started the modern Republican love affair with cutting taxes at the top. George W. Bush continued it. Donald Trump took it to new heights.
Trump has somehow convinced millions of working Americans that a billionaire who lives in a gold-plated penthouse is their champion against the wealthy elites. He promises to fight for the forgotten men and women of America, then teams up with congressional Republicans in delivering another enormous tax windfall to the people who already have more money than they could possibly spend.
And this time, the windfall comes at the expense of Medicaid and food assistance, while threatening Medicare as well, programs that millions of struggling Americans depend on.
There's something particularly cruel about telling a working mother that the country can't afford to help feed her children while finding billions more in tax breaks for people with private jets and multiple mansions.
Democrats now have an opportunity to begin changing that equation. Confronting America's enormous income and wealth disparities must be a top priority, both in the new Congress and, if they win back the White House in 2028, in the next administration.
For America's millionaires and billionaires, decades of Republican tax policy have delivered extraordinary benefits.
For everyone else, the prosperity is still trickling down.
Any day now.