Thank you for continuing to share these messages with your friends. If you are not already on our mailing list, please click here to be added to our list. You can also follow me on Facebook where you can read and share these messages. The more people we can reach, the more we contribute to this growing movement. We share these posts on our blog, A Path Forward to November 3, 2020, every two weeks, which means there will be a total of 100 missives before the Presidential election of 2020, in which our country will select a whole new course.
He has borrowed from future generations to give money to the Americans who already have money. He has told corporations he will ignore the cost of their pollution. He has denied the cataclysmic economic and environmental impact of climate change. He has destabilized trade
worldwide, destroyed foreign markets for our crops, and treated our friends like enemies.
The common narrative is that any of Donald Trump's economic "successes" might well fade by November 2020, removing for him might otherwise be an argument for votes. The truth is sharper-even though more Americans are working, for the most part these were not economic successes in the first place.
It has been a far more productive economy for stockholders than it has been for wage earners. Real wages adjusted for inflation have only started to pick up and some metropolitan areas experience labor shortages. The economic growth that we have experienced has been gained through unsustainable practices. It has exacerbated the wealth divide in America.
Donald Trump's tax cuts were designed to comfort the comfortable. Reductions in corporate tax rates were sold as a means of stimulating investment in workers, plant and equipment. But a very significant portion of the revenue created has been used for corporate stock buybacks that drive up stock prices. The same tax cut skyrocketed the deficit which will make it more difficult to find stimulus funds if the economy ends up needing a boost.
The tariffs levied have lifted more money from middle-class taxpayer pockets than the tax cuts put there in the first place. This is contrary to Donald Trump's claims (lies) about tariff revenues being a net gain for the Treasury. The in-artfulness of Trump's dealings is based upon his refusal to recognize that Xi Xing Ping needs to walk away from the table showing the Chinese that he got something too. Trump's announcement that we must and will win is geopolitically nonsensical. Decades of work building markets for agricultural products has been jettisoned.
Always scapegoat searching, Trump has selected for attack his own appointee, Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell. Powell refuses to use monetary policy (meant to control inflation and underpin job growth) as Trump's secret weapon on trade disputes. Powell is uncertain where Trump is heading, which makes two since Trump is uncertain of where Trump is heading.
There is considerable evidence that Trump propped up markets last week by inventing calls he had received from the Chinese. The things he is willing to do or say are no longer surprising to us. What is surprising is how many of us are willing to just let it pass if Trump's actions are related to the economy.
We can't let pass the implication that the debt increasing, middle-class ignoring, food stamp and health insurance depriving Trump has an argument to make for any steps on the economy. He doesn't have any such argument. That conclusion can be drawn even before we see the results it in the future of missteps he is presently taking.
Instead let's go for an economy where we not only raise the minimum wage but we fully attend to securing living wages that sustain families. Let's go for narrowing the huge wealth disparities that have grown in America. Let's establish a tax code that recognizes the 80% of the population that tax law now treats as an afterthought, if it if gives any thought at all to low-income and middle-income taxpayers.
Let's immediately take two steps to fight for economic justice. Then let's return to the upcoming Senate debate about the awful carnage that has overtaken America.
| 1) Keeping from Adding Insult to Injury | |
 | Unbelievably a gang of Senate Republicans is seriously proposing that the president issue an executive order to index the capital gains tax to inflation. This would significantly reduce the tax paid on gains on stocks whose price has doubled or tripled since the Great Recession. There has been no positive indexing of the minimum wage. Republicans have even opposed increasing the present federal minimum wage from the miniscule $7.25 an hour. Yet there seems to be no shame on lowering the capital gains tax even as recent tax cuts have blown up the deficit. It's not clear whether Trump can legally index capital gains by executive order or who would have the legal standing to challenge it. This action would cost the treasury an additional hundred billion dollars realized almost entirely by the wealthiest of Americans. At this point the center of the battle against indexing capital gains is Democratic senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Call him at 202-224-2315 to tell him this would be an awful step and encourage him to keep working to find Republican allies to oppose any such move. The best means to monitor the insults of the present and future is to follow the work of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. |
2) Advancing the Minimum Wage | |
 | Increasing the minimum wage is only one part all of the agenda for advancing the economic interests of low-income Americans. This is because even at the higher-level imposed by some states the minimum wage in no way represents a living wage. Still, it's an important step in concert with increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit and broader tax reform. Progress has been made in a score of states so there are two fronts for getting this done. The US Senate needs to take up the minimum wage bill already passed by the house which increases the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $15 over several years. At this point the Senate committee on Health Education Labor and Pensions has refused to take it up. Chair Lamar Alexander knows better than that and you can remind him that he knows better than that by calling his office at 202-224-4944. Self-evidently, in the long-term both the federal and state efforts to increase the minimum wage go better in bed as Democrats take over the US Senate and increase and win majorities in state legislatures. Second, the best guide to which states need intervention from resisters is the National Employment Law Project. You can sign up to get progress reports. If you are so inclined can give them financial support as well. |
3) Moving Forward on Gun Legislation Now | |
 | At long last there is going to be a meaningful debate in the United States centered on gun control. As much as key Republicans would like to have the debate be just about "red flag" laws where people of interest can be overseen, the debate that will be held will go to the much more significant issues of universal background checks and assault rifle bans. This is an extraordinary opportunity to do something important to respond to the massacres that have emerged across our country. The NRA and Donald Trump will be doing whatever they can to do as close to nothing as possible. It falls to us to make certain Republican Senators who have shown some interest in gun reform will step forward rather than step backwards. As with the calls we made weeks ago these five Republicans Senators must be reached because they are more interested than Trump in responding to the crisis that is before us. Please call as many of them as you can. Susan Collins of Maine 202-224-2523 Lamar Alexander of Tennessee 202-224-4944 Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania 202-224-4254 Mike Braun of Indiana 202-224-4854 Rob Portman of Ohio 202-224-3353 |
Reputable polls put us in the best shape that we have been since Donald Trump was elected. It falls to us to keep it that way. As we know there's only one thing that we need to do--- exhibit relentless, intensive, democracy-serving vigilance and action.
David Harrison
Bainbridge Island, Washington
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