Trump's Big CON: His Tax Reform Bamboozle

UPDATE IV:  "President Trump is planning on cutting taxes, and his advisers have been arguing that he does not need to reduce federal spending at the same time. Instead, they say, reduced taxes will pay to stimulate the U.S. economy, so the government will not have to borrow more money to make up the difference.

Economists aren't buying it, according to a new survey conducted at the University of Chicago."

Read the Washington Post, Survey: Just 5 percent of economists believe Trump’s big tax promise.

UPDATE III:  "After almost 100 days in office, President Trump has finally found his forte: one-page tax plans.

That's how long his first one was last September, and how long his new one was Wednesday. There's a reason for this. If you compare them side-by-side, you can see that Trump's two main innovations this time around are using bullet points and offering less specificity. Everything else is just about the same. . .

[T]the biggest difference is that the first edition of Trump's plan was merely wildly implausible, while the slightly updated second one is actually impossible."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s new, one-page tax plan is the same as his old, one-page tax plan.

UPDATE II:  "From the start, members of the administration have offered inconsistent explanations of how the tax plan would affect the middle class."

Read the Washington Post, If Trump has a tax plan, his advisers can’t agree on what it is.

But who cares about the middle class, Trump & friends get ma$$ive tax cuts!!

UPDATE:  Some people just ignore the lies, don't mind being bamboozled, and love the con man.

"The lies that tumble from Trump himself are unprecedented in scope, audacity and frequency. The Post fact-checking team documented more than 400 false or misleading statements as of Day 91 of his presidency. Other administration members have taken their cues from this,  particularly press secretary Sean Spicer, who set the tone early on by lying about Trump’s inaugural crowd sizes and accusing the press of falsely diminishing them. Yet to Trump voters, not only does this reality not exist at all; such critical media scrutiny of him and his administration also is a sign that he’s doing something right — that he’s on their side, and the news media is the enemy."

Read the Washington Post, Trump’s lies are working brilliantly. This new poll proves it.

To bamboozle is to: deceive · delude · hoodwink · mislead · take in · dupe · fool · double-cross · cheat · defraud · swindle · gull · hoax · bamboozle · entrap · con · bilk · diddle · rook · put one over on · pull a fast one on · pull the wool over someone's eyes · take for a ride · shaft · flimflam · sucker · snooker · cozen · illude · chicane.

And that about sums up The Donald's latest con.

Read the Washington Post:

Trump again overpromises, underdelivers on tax ‘plan’, which states that;

The "White House had promised to roll out a 'tax plan' Wednesday. Instead of a fully developed plan, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and senior adviser Gary Cohn put out a one-page sheet with bullet points, something you might see as a first draft of a campaign white paper. Worse yet, as we anticipated, Mnuchin and Cohn wound up getting grilled on whether President Trump, who stands to save millions (via, among other things, elimination of the alternative minimum tax), would release his tax returns. Mnuchin was emphatic: 'The president has no intention.' He falsely asserted, 'The president has released plenty of information and I think has given more financial disclosure than anybody else. I think the American population has plenty of information.' He and Cohn had no specifics about the savings for voters by tax bracket or about the expected increase in the debt. . .

This is classic Trump — all flash and big talk, with very little substance. His economic team plainly was not prepared to provide anything approaching a detailed 'plan,' but now Republicans’ actual tax plan, if they ever come up with one, will be judged in comparison with a cotton-candy plan that could never become law. Trump did “accomplish” one thing — he reminded us he has concealed his taxes and may stand to reap enormous tax savings as a result of his plan. This hardly seems like populism."

Trump, in new tax plan, promises to do what Reagan couldn’t, which noted that:

At the center of President Trump’s plan to significantly cut taxes on businesses and individuals is a promise to stimulate extraordinary economic growth, so much so, his advisers say, that the plan would pay for itself.

If he succeeds in keeping that promise, Trump will have accomplished something his tax-cutting Republican predecessors were unable to do, say economists and tax policy experts from both parties. . .

But in the experience of two other Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, tax cuts produced an uneven record of prompting economic growth. And in both instances, reductions in taxes were unable to pay for themselves, instead leaving the nation to deal with increasing federal debt."

How Trump’s tax proposal could impact his own business empire, which points out that the proposal:

"[C]ould prove to be a windfall for the Trump Organization, the private umbrella company for hundreds of Trump real estate, licensing and other companies, many of which qualify as pass-through businesses.

Trump has refused to release his tax returns, making it impossible to know how much his businesses could save on taxes. . .

A copy of Trump’s tax return from 2005 suggests that a tax cut similar to the one Trump is proposing could have lowered his tax obligation by potentially tens of millions of dollars in a single year."

Trump tax plan roundup, which also noted that:

The "Trump tax plan, such as it is — it’s 'less than 200 words and contain[s] just seven numbers' . . . is a massive sprinkling of the old supply-side, trickle-down fairy dust that very few budget wonks will endorse, regardless of their political stripes . . . "that no feasible tax reform in this country will raise economic growth to 3 percent on a sustained basis given our current demographics . . . [but the proposal would, according to the] Upshot’s Neil Irwin . . . benefit the president himself and his family: 'It is striking how many of the affect the president and his family. He is a high-income earner. He receives income from 564 business entities, according to his financial disclosure form, and could take advantage of the low rate on 'pass-through' companies. According to his leaked 2005 tax return, he paid an extra $31 million because of the alternative minimum tax that he seeks to eliminate. And his heirs could eventually enjoy his enormous assets tax-free. . . [and it is striking] the extent to which Trump continues to push policies that totally disregard the working-class people who helped him get elected. First it was a health-care plan that kicked 24 million off the insurance rolls. Now it’s a tax cut that delivers almost all its goodies to the nation’s wealthiest households."