I missed the hearings, so I’m asking:
When members of Congress quizzed Stephen Miran as this president’s choice to chair the Council of Economic Advisers, did anyone ask him to identify the planet on which he resides?
It could not be Earth.
No one from this planet would so nonchalantly have said what he did the other day about the devastation of millions losing Medicaid.
Worry not, shrugged Miran, quoted in The New York Times: The tax cuts in the budget bill would create jobs, he said, which “brings down the number of people on Medicaid” through employer-provided health insurance.
Just like that.
The arrogance. The china-and-silver elitism. It sounded like a famously grating ‘80s TV pitch by Texas tycoon Eddie Chiles for his oil services company. He chirped, “If you don’t have an oil well, get one!”
Lucky man, Stephen Miran. He has an employer that provides health coverage. That would be us.
Many things are wrong about Miran’s white-gloved outlook, emulating the raw, clueless cruelty of a golf-gloved president. The two biggest:
— If history is our guide, these tax cuts will produce few jobs.
— Whatever jobs are created, about half will have no health coverage. That’s why we have Medicaid. That’s why we have the Affordable Care Act. Thank goodness for people in leadership 16 years ago who acted to address this reality.
Then there is today’s Republican Party, which disgracefully continues to live a fiscal fantasy with the country swept along in its fallacies.
Ever since Ronald Reagan’s own budget director, David Stockman, blew the whistle on the deficit-building nature of cutting taxes without compensating for the lost revenue, the GOP has been in the throes of myth – that tax cuts pay for themselves.
What happened in 2017 when this same president enacted the then-temporary tax cuts that big businesses and billionaires so relished and which people in the middle and below barely felt? What did it do for the economy? A lot less than advertised.
The Center for Public Policy Priorities examined a vaunted 20 percent deduction for business income from that legislation. Proponents said it would boost investment and create jobs. The center’s analysis found “no evidence that the deduction significantly increased investment, wages for non-owners, or employment.”
That’s some achievement at the cost of billions of dollars in debt. I’ve got to say, there’s nothing less than “no.”
What about the stimulus of new dollars in taxpayers’ pockets? It would have been significant if the dollars were significant for the non-investor class. It wasn’t. It won’t be.
A person making less than $35,000 will average a whopping $150 tax cut from this monstrosity. A person making $217,000 or more would average a $12,500 tax cut.
It gets worse, considering what the legislation will cut, including food assistance for the poor and, of course, Medicaid.
A Yale University study found an eerie trade-off when all was calculated, with benefits zapped and meager tax cuts calculated for the lowest earners. When averaged, they would lose 2.3 percent of income. Meanwhile, those in the upper fifth would see their income increase by – can you guess? – 2.3 percent.
Back to employer-provided health coverage: Don’t get young Americans started on this beyond-precious commodity. Before today’s “gig economy,” the practice of “temping the workforce” increasingly meant on-the-cheap business practices that skirted age-old obligations to employees.
The fact is that about four of 10 young workers have no health coverage from their jobs. They are the ones working hard but who are at the mercy of tricks by this Congress and this president to catch them not doing what it takes to keep up Medicaid eligibility.
A work requirement for this privilege? Know that only about 8 percent of Medicaid recipients are between jobs or otherwise in the straits of economic despair. Isn’t that the reason for the safety net?
Don’t worry, folks. The free market will fix all with a clap of magic golf gloves.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com
