Traditional Media Parrot the Democrats' Attacks On GOP Tax Cuts

As the tax debate  heats up in the Senate, Congressional Democrats are stepping up their misleading and inaccurate attacks on Republican tax cuts. Democrats in the House and Senate are all calling the tax bill a “billionaires tax cut,” a totally inaccurate description. Senate Minority Leader Schumer calls it a “billionaire giveaway.”  House Democrats falsely describe the bill as a $4.5 trillion tax cut for “billionaires and big corporations.”

Unfortunately, the mainstream media, which should know better, is parroting the Democratic charges line for line over and over. The New York Times says the Republican tax bill “helps the richest.”  The Washington Post says the tax bill primarily “benefits Americans at the top.” CNBC says the bill “benefits the wealthiest Americans.”

All of these statements made by Democrats and repeated endlessly by the media are incorrect. In fact, the overwhelming amount of the Republican tax cuts goes to middle-class taxpayers and small businesses.

The nonpartisan Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation has released a detailed analysis of the tax bill showing the distribution of the tax changes by income categories. These numbers do not lie. Even the Washington Post had to admit that the numbers show that “most of the tax cuts primarily benefit middle-class taxpayers,” and that “most” of the bill’s “cost” goes to “tax cuts for the non-rich.”

According to the Joint Committee numbers, 70% of the tax cuts go to taxpayers earning less than $500,000. Nearly 85% of the tax cuts go to taxpayers earning less than $1 million. These are the official statistics the media routinely ignores in their stories about billionaire tax cuts.

The media also consistently fails to point out who actually pays taxes when writing about Republican tax cuts for the rich. According to the latest IRS statistics, the top 50% of all  taxpayers pay 97% of all federal income taxes. The bottom half pay only 3%. The top 10% of taxpayers pay 72% of all federal income taxes, and the top 1% pay 40.4% of all income taxes.

As for corporate tax cuts, the claim that the tax bill benefits big corporations is also not true. The bill does not change the 21% corporate tax rate, which has been enormously successful in boosting investment, wages, and global competitiveness. The business tax cuts included in the bill are offset by other corporate tax increases. The main business tax cut in the bill goes to 25 million small businesses.

Congressional Democrats attack Republican tax cuts all the time with overblown rhetoric. No one but the media seems to actually believe them. The media needs to stop repeating every Democratic talking point as a fact, and start reporting on what is actually in the bill.