General Discussion

DonViejo

(60,536 posts) Sun Nov 26, 2017, 09:37 AM Nov 2017

Republicans fret over White House sales job on taxes

Awkward moments with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and economic adviser Gary Cohn have Democrats cheering ahead of what may be a tough Senate vote.

By ANNIE KARNI and ELIANA JOHNSON 11/26/2017 07:11 AM EST Updated 11/26/2017 07:44 AM EST

When photos of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and his wife, Louise Linton, posing with freshly printed sheets of money ricocheted across the internet earlier this month, Democrats fighting the GOP tax bill saw an opportunity to whack it.

Mnuchin, one of White House’s lead pitchmen for a tax reform bill Republicans are trying to present as a cut for the middle class, is a Yale-educated, second generation Goldman Sachs banker — and here he was grinning as he presented his black-leather-gloved wife with hot-off-the-press cash.

“If you asked us to put together a photo shoot to show this is a taxpayer-funded giveaway to millionaires and billionaires, I don’t think we could do a better job of this,” said Tim Hogan, a spokesman for the anti-tax reform activist group Not One Penny. The group made a Facebook ad featuring the photograph that it says led to thousands of calls to lawmakers from constituents, telling members to vote “no” on the tax bill.

Mnuchin’s money shot underscored the awkwardness for the White House of selecting multi-millionaires as the principal salesmen for a tax bill it claims will boost workers’ wages and cut taxes for the average middle-class family. Mnuchin, along with fellow Goldman Sachs alum Gary Cohn, have consistently fumbled that pitch, in part due to their own backgrounds, said both Democrats and Republicans watching the effort.

more
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/26/white-house-taxes-push-democrats-259708

5 replies

= new reply since forum marked as read

Highlight:

Republicans fret over White House sales job on taxes (Original Post) DonViejo Nov 2017 OP

This is not case of sensitizing the "haves" to the "have-nots" DFW Nov 2017 #1

Yup. And don't care. He's a lie peddlar for the kleptocrats, Hortensis Nov 2017 #5

. dalton99a Nov 2017 #2

republican ream job on American taxpayers Achilleaze Nov 2017 #3

There is nothing behind the sales pitch for the American public... Wounded Bear Nov 2017 #4

DFW

(54,405 posts)

1. This is not case of sensitizing the "haves" to the "have-nots"

Reply to DonViejo (Original post)

Sun Nov 26, 2017, 09:52 AM

Nov 2017

This is a case of the "haves" telling the "have-nots" to fuck off and like it.

The likes of Gary Cohn haven't the slightest idea what it takes to budget for a new car or a new kitchen (hint to Cohn--it's actually more than $1000 in both cases), and proved it with cameras rolling.

Hortensis

(58,785 posts)

5. Yup. And don't care. He's a lie peddlar for the kleptocrats,

Reply to DFW (Reply #1)

Sun Nov 26, 2017, 01:12 PM

Nov 2017

including himself -- when he has the good sense to stick to lies and his arrogance and contempt don't get the better of him.

He's reportedly only amassed perhaps a half billion so far, half or most of that being a $282 MILLION exit package from Goldman Sachs to become economic adviser to Rump. Ethics experts are concerned...

Makes you especially appreciate things like when Cohn said it’s fine for corporations to use tax breaks to enrich executives, going on to explain that we will then be able to look forward to dribbles down from the wealthy. He made it sound more like practically a deluge of prosperity, of course.

The logic is that offering a lower tax rate to corporations would entice them to bring money onshore that would then lead to the hiring of American workers.

The proposal re-ups a Bush-era policy that failed to boost job growth; the top 15 companies that took advantage of the repatriation holiday actually reduced their total employment of U.S. workers over the period of the policy.

Many of the corporations that took part in the tax holiday instead spent the money on stock buybacks, a way to enrich insiders and executives; among the top 15 beneficiaries, stock buybacks jumped 16 percent from 2004 to 2005 and 38 percent from 2005 to 2006. ...

I don't think it's good for anyone to be in the public light - for negative reasons. Gary Cohn