Free Republic

President Trump announced Monday that he will introduce a new tax cut for middle-class Americans in November. “We’re giving a middle-income tax reduction of about 10 percent – we’re doing it now for middle-income people,” he told reporters. The president described the proposed tax cuts again Monday night while speaking at a Ted Cruz rally in Texas, saying, “We’re going to be putting in a 10 percent tax cut for middle-income families. It’s going to be put in next year. In addition to the big tax cuts you’ve already gotten.” He added that Congress would vote on the proposal after...

Former Vice President Joe Biden is viewed by many as the Democrats’ best hope of winning back those blue-collar workers in states like Ohio and Michigan who defied tradition and voted for Donald Trump in 2016. Certainly, compared to progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) or Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), the likeable “Uncle Joe," raised in hardscrabble Scranton, Pa. by middle-class parents, seems a good bet to reconnect with those voters. But what does Biden or any other Democrat hoping to beat President Trump in 2020 offer the middle class? Nothing but the politics of envy and a transparent effort...

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog, By the standards of previous generations, the middle class has been stripmined of income, assets and purchasing power. What does it take to be middle class nowadays? Defining the middle class is a parlor game, with most of the punditry referring to income brackets as the defining factor. People tend to self-report that they belong to the middle class based on income, but income is not the key metric: 12 other factors are more telling measures of middle class membership than income. In Why the Middle Class Is Doomed (April 17,...

A woman who woke up from a thirty-year coma in 2018 would be forgiven if she looked around and came to believe our world is falling apart.Cable news and social media are a steady drumbeat of negativity. There is a sense the world is not right.Russian collusion. Xenophobia. Antifa. Unite the Right. Stormy Daniels. #MeToo. Mass shootings. The Deep State. It’s a cacophony of angst, outrage, and political anger.The woman who emerged from her coma would have little or no idea that the world is experiencing an economic miracle, just as most people today do not. But it’s happening...

Four in 10 Americans are struggling to pay for their basic needs such as groceries or housing, a problem even middle-class households confront, according to a new study from the Urban Institute. Despite the U.S. economy being near full employment, 39.4 percent of adults between 18 and 64 years old said they experienced at least one type of material hardship in 2017, according to the study, which surveyed more than 7,500 adults about whether they had trouble paying for housing, utilities, food or health care. The findings surprised researchers at the Urban Institute, who had expected to find high levels...

If the U.S. economy is really doing so well, then why is homelessness rising so rapidly? As the gap between the rich and the poor continues to increase, the middle class is steadily eroding. In fact, I recently gave my readers 15 signs that the middle class in America is being systematically destroyed. More Americans are falling out of the middle class and into poverty with each passing day, and this is one of the big reasons why the number of homeless is surging. For example, the number of people living on the street in L.A. has shot up 75...

Managua (AFP) – One evening as she watched some local kids play outside in her Managua neighborhood, Nicaraguan Mireya Alegria was shocked to see police, motorcycles and a white van carrying hooded men speed past. “They started firing,” she says. It was the moment she decided enough was enough. Now Alegria is one of the thousands of Nicaraguans desperately seeking to process migration documents and flee to neighboring Central American countries, as two months of anti-government dissent has triggered increasingly violent state repression. “Thousands of people come daily to do paperwork,” said Nubia Manzanares, a migration agent, adding that many...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) dodged some questions Thursday on whether she would tell Democrats to vote for making middle class tax cuts in the GOP tax reform bill permanent. The moderator referenced Republicans planning a vote to make the middle class tax cuts permanent, asking “are you going to tell Democrats for or against doing that?” Rather than responding directly, Pelosi bashed Republicans for not making the tax cuts permanent in the first place. “Well you see, here’s what this is since we’re having a budget meeting,” Pelosi began. “The reason they didn’t make them permanent in...

Step one: Scream that the GOP tax reform bill would be a "massive attack" on the middle class.  Step two: Concede that actually yes, nearly all middle income earners would get a tax break under the bill.  Step three: Call for its repeal anyway, effectively demanding a tax increase -- a "massive attack," one might even say -- on middle class Americans and US businesses.  It sounds like Bernie Sanders has picked up the same tax hike hymnal from which Nancy Pelosi was singing last week: Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called Monday for the Republican tax law to be repealed...

The return of the hit TV sitcom “Roseanne” couldn’t have come at a better time. It’s an opportunity for many Americans to be introduced to the working class. In the show, Roseanne Conner (Roseanne Barr) is a Trump supporter. She’s got a bad knee but can’t get treatment because her insurance won’t cover it. Her husband, Dan, played again by John Goodman, wears a sleep apnea device and does drywall work for a living, though he should probably be retired. The Conners represent a typical Midwestern blue-collar family. But it could be many blue-collar families every­where. They love God and...

Opening the menu at the California Grill at Walt Disney World’s Contemporary Resort overlooking the Magic Kingdom, I expected to giggle at the affordability of everything. I’m a New Yorker. Nothing out here in the sticks costs as much as it does back home, right? Instead, I found $19 glasses of wine and a $75 rib-eye. If you’re a person of average means, a trip to Disney World could leave you bippity-boppity broke. Disney World, that enchanted land of middle class dreams, isn’t so middle-class anymore. So why is it more popular than ever? Fort Mickey is exhibit A for...

Democrats are choking on crow for opposing this tax bill. Are they this economically illiterate? You pass the most extensive tax reform in nearly 30 years, it creates a better job creating and investing environment, and companies begin to boost U.S. investment, dole out bonuses to workers, some increase wages, and make declarations that charitable donations will go up. Yeah, that sounds bad, or something. It all centers on the notion that the Left thinks that your money is their money, and that the government, preferably run by over-educated, snobby liberal elitists, know best to allocate how that money is...

The self described socialist and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, an actual communist (he spent his honeymoon in Soviet Russia by his own volition) who keeps blathering about “millionaires and billionaires”, a strange dude who never had a real job in his life until he was like 40 years old and then  started working for the government, and now he’s basically a one percenter himself (he owns like 3 houses and he’s worth millions of dollars) admitted on Sunday that President Trump’s tax reform is actually pretty good for America’s middle class. To make things even more interesting, comrade Bernie aknowledged...

Well, Democratic spin surely has the middle class skeptical of the Republican tax bill. On Friday, President Trump signed the most extensive tax reform in 30 years. It was framed as a giveaway to the wealthy and something akin to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by congressional Democrats. Not a single Democrat voted for the bill. In reality, itÂ’s a middle class tax cut. Eighty percent of Americans for at least the next eight years will be paying less. The analysis says it. And now CBS News spoke to three families from Providence, Rhode Island, Fresno, California, and Cary,...

The GOP’s tax reform bill passed through the House of Representatives for the second time this week on Wednesday by a vote of 224-201. Once passed by the Senate, the bill will be sent to President’s Trump’s desk. It will be the largest legislative achievement of the almost one-year long presidency that no one saw coming. “Today, Congress approved a once-in-a-generation tax reform bill. This is the end of a long journey to deliver major tax relief to the American people,” House Speaker Paul Ryan stated. While Democrats and the mainstream media continue to call this move by the Republicans...

Last night, the Senate adopted the final version of a major tax overhaul that nonpartisan organizations all agree will boost economic growth, make the US corporate tax rate far more competitive on the global stage, and will cut taxes, on average, for every single income group in America.  Every single Democrat who cast votes on the bill in both legislative chambers voted no.  'Resistance' now requires consigning your working class and middle-income constituents to higher tax burdens, apparently.  Thanks to Democrats' unified failure, more than 80 percent of taxpayers will see an immediate cut, with less than five percent getting...

This week, the House and Senate will vote on comprehensive, pro-growth, pro-family tax reform. The legislation, known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, will give families and individuals across the country tax reduction and simplification starting in 2018. The legislation includes rate reduction and a doubling of the standard deduction. Under this change, the first $12,000 for an individual and $24,000 for a family will be tax-free. The standard deduction is already used by 105 million taxpayers across the country, who will see a significant tax reduction. In addition, the plan doubles the child tax credit to $2,000, helping...

In the interest of intellectual honesty and transparency, let's begin with a few important concessions to skeptics of the GOP tax reform bill: First, not every single American would be a winner under the plan.  A small percentage of US taxpayers would see a tax increase (disproportionately, these would be higher-income itemizers from high-tax states), and a number of deductions that help certain people with heavy medical expenses and student loan debt would be eliminated (proponents say much or all of the resulting blow would be mitigated by lower rates and a doubled standard deduction).  Second, among the "losers" would...

We'll get to the study mentioned in the headline shortly -- but first, it's already time for another tax reform fact check, necessitated by the Left's relentless machine of anti-reform propaganda and distortions.  On MSNBC, anchor Ali Velshi butchered the facts on the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of the projected impact of Senate Republicans' tax reform bill.  Here's the segment in which he disseminates, well, fake news, followed by an explanation of exactly how he misrepresented the CBO chart. Via the Free Beacon: MSNBC's Ali Velshi Messes Up CBO Chart on Tax Reform (Video) "More bad news from the Congressional...

Washington, DC – Today, Club for Growth President David McIntosh issued the following statement as the House Ways and Means Committee continues to mark up the “Tax Cuts and Jobs” bill:“While the corporate tax cut will lead to some increase in our nation’s GDP, the rest of the provisions on individual taxpayers fails the pro-growth test,” Club for Growth President David McIntosh stated.“Republicans must correct at least four serious shortcomings of the House bill to follow through on campaign promises and to bring our nation closer to a tax reform proposal that is truly pro-growth.“1: millionaires’ tax rate: House Republicans...