Despite Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace citing evidence to the contrary, Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy tells the bald-faced lie that Trump's Tax Cut and Jobs Act was a "blue-collar working bill."
May 2, 2021

Despite Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace citing evidence to the contrary, Louisiana Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy proceeded to tell the bald-faced lie that Trump's Tax Cut and Jobs Act was a "blue-collar working bill." If Wallace were something resembling an actual news reporter, he'd have followed up this response from Cassidy by citing another report from the Tax Policy Center from last year showing that there was little economic benefit from the 2017 tax cuts, and that they produced only modest job growth.

During a discussion about Biden's proposal to reverse the Trump tax cuts and who they benefited, Wallace cited an article from last month contrasting Biden's proposals with Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, and noted that "According to the Tax Policy Center, the average first year tax cut for a household making less than $25,000, the average tax cut was just $60. The average tax cut for a household making $3.4 million was $193,000."

"According to the Tax Policy Center, the average first year tax cut for a household making less than $25,000, the average tax cut was just $60. The average tax cut for a household making $3.4 million was $193,000," Wallace continued. After noting that of the 2 million tax filers in Louisiana, only 14,000 of them reported incomes of over a half million dollars, Wallace asked Cassidy, "What's wrong with raising the top tax rate to where it was during the Bush 43 and Obama administrations in order to help the working and middle- class?"

"Now, that was all part of the Tax Cut and Jobs Act bill. You can't separate them," Cassidy replied. "So if you want to say my gosh, these people are making more money, why don't we return and keep the Tax Cut and Jobs Act -- that's the flip side of the question you're asking, and I think that flip side is the part that should be emphasized."

Wallace responded to Cassidy's word salad by noting that "there certainly is some data to indicate that the Trumps tax cuts benefited the wealthy and corporations more than they did the working and middle-class," which was just a polite way to avoid telling Cassidy that he's a liar to his face. Wallace again pressed Cassidy on what's wrong with asking the wealthy to pay a bit more in taxes, and that's when Cassidy told the ridiculous fairy tale about the Trump Tax Cuts and Jobs Act being a "blue-collar working bill," and basically trying to turn the definition of trickle-down economics on its head.

CASSIDY: Yeah, so if you raise -- academics would say if you raise taxes on corporations you have lower wages, you have less investment and you hurt shareholders — think pension funds.

Now, if it's okay to have lower wages for working people, it's a blue collar -- it's a blue-collar thing. If it's okay to have less investment, it's a blue-collar thing. But if you want higher wages, if you want more investment, if you want more efficient deployment of capital, then it's anti-blue-collar.

We saw under the Tax Cut and Jobs Act bill a blue-collar working bill.

Investment increased wages among the lower quintiles of Americans with fuller employment. That's the recipe for success, not taking trillions and trickling it through Democratic interest groups and hopefully some of it getting down to the folks that you know you want to help.

It's the same lie they've been telling forever about the economy. Give more money to the rich and it's somehow going to magically rain down on the working class and businesses are going to pay people more out of the goodness of their hearts.

Here's a chart from the Tax Policy Center article cited by Chris Wallace showing the difference between who benefited from Biden's American Rescue Plan, and Trump's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or, as Cassidy called it, Trump's "blue-collar working bill."

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As Joe Biden correctly stated during his speech to Congress this past Wednesday, trickle-down economics has failed. That won't stop Republicans from repeating the lie over and over again as Cassidy did here.

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