Last updated on July 18th, 2023 at 01:22 pm
Republicans have been lying about the Biden stimulus. The majority of the stimulus money goes to help individuals in the middle class and below.
Republicans have been ranting about the aid in the Biden stimulus for state and local governments and inventing imaginary wasteful projects that are in the bill.
The reality is that the majority of Trump’s tax cut that Republicans supported went to the wealthy and corporations. The Biden stimulus, which Republicans voted against, is mostly spent helping people.
Video of Steven Rattner explaining the difference on Morning Joe:
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
The vast majority of the Trump tax cut went to the wealthy and corporations, but the majority of the Biden stimulus goes to help individuals. It is one of the biggest shifts in government priorities in 80 years. pic.twitter.com/Zcb9WhHTRT
— Sarah Reese Jones (@PoliticusSarah) March 8, 2021
Rattner said:
You see the TCJA was about tax cuts for businesses, the red pie slice, and for people making more than $75,000, the blue slice. And then 16% for people making less than $75,000. It is like night and day. When you look to the right side and you see the American Rescue Plan. Yes, there’s a lot aimed at covid on the right side. But 52%, the two-slice his on the right are aid to individuals, checks, unemployment, tax cuts for children, or for child care. So when you look at the bottom of this one, $143 billion of tax cuts and $1.75 trillion of spending increases. So the most dramatic shift in the philosophy of government, as I said, really going back 70 or 80 years.
And then if you look another way at the impact of these, the next chart, you can see this perhaps even more starkly. This is how each of these bills affected people at different income levels. So on the left side you have the lowest income level, lowest 20% of people. 23% of the benefits of this plan go to those people in the bottom 20%. Only 1%, only 1% of the TCJA went to those people. If you look over at the right, 65%, the red bar, 65% of the TCJA went to the top 20% of Americans and just 11% of this bill, mostly the $1,400 checks which cut off themselves at $160,000, went to the top 11%. You can see the dramatic skewing and who is helped and who is helped more and who is helped less between these two bills.
Here is Rattner’s point in chart form:
Trump’s tax cut was an epic failure that blew a hole in the debt and weakened the economy long before the pandemic. President Biden’s stimulus is not about dealing with the current crisis but also starting to restore the economic standing of many Americans who never recovered from the Great Recession.
The Biden stimulus is the most historic use of government to help people since FDR, and all Republicans have done in response is to say no and lie about the aid that will be delivered.
For more discussion about this story join our Rachel Maddow and MSNBC group.
Follow and Like PoliticusUSA on Facebook
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
