Trump's Treasury Pick Solidifies His Elitist Agenda.
While Not Supporting A Minimum Wage Raise, Scott Bessent Does Support Billionaire Tax Cuts.
We’ve largely covered the elitist nature of Donald Trump’s cabinet. From totaling 13 billionaires, or a similar number of Fox News contributors, it was clear from the jump what Trump’s agenda would be heading into his second term.
And it doesn’t resemble the worker-first messaging he utilized on the campaign trail.
No pick might better represent this than Scott Bessent, the man Trump tapped to lead the Treasury Department. A hedge-fund owner and Trump advisor, Bessent is one of the many billionaires Trump hopes can shape American policy. If confirmed, he would also become the first openly gay member of a Republican cabinet.
While not glaringly unqualified like some of Trump’s other cabinet nominations, Bessent more so represents the problems with the Trump economic agenda. It will always disproportionately favor the wealthy, even at the behest of the working class.
Take for instance this question he fielded from Senator Bernie Sanders, on the topic of minimum wage. Where, despite the average cost of living in America being $68,808, which equates to $33 an hour, Bessent stated he would not work to raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25.
Which is especially gross considering worker productivity is at an all-time high, leading to record profits for corporations. However, instead of funneling that down to the workers who created it, this is being spent entirely on stock buybacks.
On top of this, education costs are up 211% since 1960, child-care costs are up over 200%, and housing costs up 129% all in the time wages have only climbed 0.94%.
What was on Scott Bessent’s priority list? Tax cuts for billionaires. Even going as far to answer Elizabeth Warren by doubling down that no billionaire is too rich for a tax cut.
Tax cuts aren’t going to bring down the price of eggs. Tax cut’s aren’t going to alleviate the strain of child care on families. Especially considering the first iteration of “Trump Tax Cuts” netted around just $500 saved for the average family. Meanwhile, billionaires were saving upwards of $62,000.
Though it wasn’t just in percent of income these tax cuts were skewed. A favorite defense of supporters of the tax cuts is how the income tax cut percentage was equal, thus its fair. As rich pay people more in taxes, so they should get more back.
This on its face sounds true, though the wealthy skirt more taxes than the average individual already, its in the underlying parts of the tax cut the true disproportion shows. As many additional cuts added in are provisions that only, or disproportionately benefit the wealthy.
A couple examples could be raising the Alternative Minimum Tax(AMT), or doubling the Estate Tax Exemption. Both these provisions only apply to households in either the top 10% of earners, netting them an additional cut not provided to the middle class.
Other tax cuts that only apply to top earners would be pass-through income and corporate tax cuts, only further enabling additional savings exclusively to more affluent households.
Match that with the fact even tax cuts middle-class families rely on were met with requirements that priced out a lot of low earning families. For example, the Child Tax Credit available in his 2017 legislation had income requirements that left 26 million low-income families unable to receive it.
Yet there was no ceiling, meaning even the wealthiest of families that didn’t need it could accept it.
Despite these glaring disparities, this is clearly still the focus of Trump’s Treasury Secretary. Probably because he himself is one of those billionaires set to benefit from a second round of tax cuts. Just like many in Trump’s cabinet.
This is why his cabinet only solidifies what us on the left were saying, Trump is a candidate for the elites, by the elites, and he’ll toss the working-class in a trash can if it means his billionaire-buddies will be better off.