Half-Baked: The 2025 Trump Tax Cut

America has a habit of voting against its own self-interest with both hands. In 2009, Barack Obama rescued the country from financial ruin. The GOP’s tight embrace of Wall Street removed all the guardrails, allowing a few greedy men to drive an entire country into the abyss.

The catastrophe was so severe that American companies began collapsing like a house of cards, dragging the rest of the world down with them. The Obama administration restored America and went on to provide a massive safety net for financially vulnerable Americans by passing the Affordable Care Act.

The number of uninsured Americans dropped from 48 million in 2010 to 25 million in 2016. The Democrats rescued the economy and then extended a wide healthcare safety net around society. In return, Americans smacked Team Obama in the face, handing them a 63-seat loss in the House.

The Democrats lost 63 seats in the 2010 midterms—their worst loss since 1938. If Americans keep voting this way, what reason do they give the other side to change its approach and steer clear of trickle-down economics? I don’t see the benefit for them, and neither do they. There are valid voting patterns incentivizing them to keep the interests of their wealthy supporters ahead of everyone else’s.

The GOP now wants to reduce the corporate tax rate further, from the current 21% to 15%. When they slashed it from 35% to 21% in 2017, they promised economic gains for all Americans. But for most, the economy barely moved.

CBO

If you look closely, you’ll notice that the 14% drop in corporate tax reduced corporate income tax revenue by $92 billion. The economic paradise Trump promised never arrived, and the tax reduction did not boost corporate tax income for the federal government. If all things had stayed the same, that alone would have reduced federal income by close to a trillion dollars over ten years.

But……it was just one year. In two years, surely the Trump-GOP “la-la land” promise would have delivered, and corporate income tax would have soared past its previous levels, right?