- Senator Chuck Grassley attempted to link the 2017 Trump tax bill to the recent economic recovery.
- “The best pre-pandemic economy in 50 years, started by Trump’s tax cuts, is roaring back after a virus interlude,” he tweeted.
- A government rapporteur has attributed the rapid economic recovery in part to Biden’s incentives.
- Check out Insider’s business page for more stories.
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley said Friday that the 2017 Republican Tax Act resulted in the economy regaining 850,000 jobs.
“The best pre-pandemic economy in 50 years, started by Trump’s tax cut, is roaring back after a virus interlude,” he wrote on Twitter, referring to President Donald Trump and the tax law passed in 2017.
—ChuckGrassley (@ChuckGrassley) July 2, 2021
Grassley is a senior Republican and senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He played a key role in enforcing the 2017 Tax Act, which lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and introduced temporary income tax breaks for individuals that expire four years later. It cleared Congress without democratic support.
Most Americans received a tax cut under this bill, but most of the benefits went to the rich and big corporations. The bill added $ 2 trillion to the federal deficit and didn’t pay off as many Republicans claimed at the time.
Many economists argue that the tax bill was a godsend for the richest Americans and multinationals. It gave the economy a short-lived boost that leveled off by the end of 2018. The record economic expansion Grassley cited also preceded Trump’s arrival at the White House.
Trump never seemed to take the pandemic seriously. After approving a $ 2 trillion emergency rescue package in March 2020, he pushed hard to reopen the economy as virus cases piled up across the country. The unemployment rate was at least twice what it was before the pandemic for most of the year.
A report released Thursday by the Congressional Budget Office attributed the acceleration of the current economic recovery in part to aggressive stimulus measures approved by President Joe Biden earlier this year. The non-partisan scorer also forecast that the economy was on its way to regaining all jobs lost by the pandemic by mid-2022.
On Friday, Biden announced the $ 1.9 trillion stimulus bill as a factor that spawned the latest employment numbers after months of disappointing earnings.
“The last time the economy grew at this rate was in 1984 and Ronald Reagan told us it was tomorrow in America,” said Biden. “Well, it will soon be afternoon here, the sun is coming out.” Moments later, he said his work to revitalize the economy “seems to be working a bit”.
But Trump’s corporate tax law is once again a political lightning rod. The Democrats are trying to cut parts of it back to fund their extensive infrastructure and social spending plans. Biden has proposed raising the corporate tax rate to 28%, though some moderate Democrats are in favor of a smaller increase to 25%.