Friday Talking Points (460) -- #BillionairesFirst? #NotOnePenny!

To date, the two best hashtags we've seen to counter the just-released Republican tax plan are #BillionairesFirst and #NotOnePenny, so we decided to use them in our title. Because over the next few weeks, there will be a monstrous messaging battle between Republicans and Democrats over how their new tax cut plan should be framed. Democrats seem poised to win this battle, but then again there is no guarantee that's how it will play out. So today we thought we'd devote a large portion of the column to mustering up the arguments Democrats should immediately start making to any who will listen.

The optimism about how the public will ultimately react comes from some recent polling conducted before the GOP bill was even unveiled. A full half of the public is already opposed to the GOP tax plan, sight unseen, while only one-third supported it, a difference of 17 points. And a whopping six in ten people already think that the GOP proposals on tax cuts will favor the rich. Similar majorities already see the tax system rigged in favor of the wealthy and want to see corporations pay higher taxes, not lower. The mood of the country is already set against large tax cuts for the one percent and Wall Street, in other words, and Democrats just need to successfully tap into that mood.

We're going to go into a lot of detail in the talking points section this week, so for now let's just hit the high points of what Democrats should be shouting from the rooftops:

• The Republican tax plan increases the national debt by trillions, in order to give 80 percent of the benefits to big businesses.


• An analysis for the New York Times shows that 13 million American families making less than $100,000 a year will actually see their taxes go up under this plan. Republicans are trying to sell this as a "middle-class tax cut," but that is just flat-out a lie for at least 13 million families.


• While 13 million middle-class families will be paying higher taxes, the shifting of the tax brackets is going to guarantee a tax cut to the tune of $24,348 for every family making over one million dollars a year. Once again: these tax cuts are not targeted at the middle class, and anyone who tells you they are is lying to you.


• Two of their tax cuts in particular will help only the very wealthy -- the elimination of the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax. This means Donald Trump Junior won't have to pay a single penny on his inheritance, and it means that his father Donald J. Trump will save -- from the only tax return from him that we've seen -- a whopping eighty percent of his tax bill each and every year. Targeted to the middle class? One of these tax breaks only applies to incomes above $130,000 and the other only to estates worth more than $5 million. Middle-class families get next to nothing, and the very wealthy make out like bandits, once again.


• Teachers will no longer be able to deduct school supplies they have to buy. Cancer patients will no longer be able to deduct the costs of their medical care. Young Americans won't be able to deduct the interest paid on their student loans. Flood and hurricane victims won't be able to deduct the losses they've suffered. It is astonishing how Republicans have selected some very vulnerable groups to increase taxes on, seemingly out of nothing but the desire to be mean-spirited. Cancer patients? Hurricane victims? Really?


• The bottom line: We have tried trickle-down before, and it has failed. It just failed spectacularly in Kansas, as a matter of fact -- check the facts. American workers are tired of being told that giving a massive tax cut to the bosses and owners is somehow supposed to make their lives better. The rich will get richer under this plan, and the middle class will continue to shrink. The income gap exists because of tax policies like these, and the gap will only continue to get wider and wider if this bill is passed.

President Donald Trump, who is supposed to be some sort of branding genius, was given the task of coming up with a name for the bill. His idea? "The Cut Cut Cut Act." No, really! That's the best he could do. Congressional Republicans wisely decided to name it on their own, instead. Trump also has been -- bizarrely -- pushing congressional Republicans hard to include a "repeal Obamacare" measure in the bill as well. This could spell doom for the already-shaky prospects the bill has for passage, so assumably congressional Republicans will ignore him on this issue, too. If Trump does get his way, it'll just make the bill that much easier for Democrats to defeat.

But that's enough for now -- as we mentioned, we'll get to more detail later. This fight is going to dominate Washington for at least the next two months, so everyone should be prepared for the effort that will be necessary to oppose the GOP tax plan.

Before we do, there was one other major story out of Washington this week, as Bob Mueller made his first public moves in his investigation. Paul Manafort and Rick Gates were indicted on money-laundering, tax evasion, fraud, conspiracy, and failing to register as a foreign agent, but the bigger bombshell was that it was revealed that George Papadopoulos had already pled guilty to the crime of lying to federal officers about contacts he made with Russia while he was a member of the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos was arrested months ago, and apparently then cooperated with Mueller's team -- which has got to make anyone connected to Trump who talked to Papadopoulos after that point extremely nervous.

Those are pretty big first steps, but what many noticed was the absence of one of the key figures -- Michael Flynn -- from the list of Mueller targets. Has Flynn flipped? Months ago, his lawyer was trying to get Flynn immunity for testifying fully before Congress about Russia, promising his client had a story to tell. So has Mueller already heard that story in full? Nobody knows, because unlike just about every other segment of the Trump administration, Mueller's team has been astonishingly leak-free, to date. There have been no inside rumors, no advance warning, no early releases of information at all -- which has left journalists with nothing to do but speculate about what Mueller might do next.

Court records from the indictments and the plea deal are being poured over, since in the absence of leaks it is the only hard evidence we've got of what Mueller has uncovered. The New York Times reports on a meeting attended by (among other advisors) Papadopoulos, Jeff Sessions, and Donald Trump:



This spurred Al Franken to openly question -- once again -- how honest Sessions has been in his testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee. In a letter to Sessions, Franken asks: "This is another example in an alarming pattern in which you, the nation's top law enforcement officer, apparently failed to tell the truth, under oath, about the Trump team’s contacts with agents of Russia."

Trump, of course, insists that the whole thing is a made-up "witch hunt" launched by Democrats sore over losing the election to him. So how is he doing convincing the public? Well, not so good, according to a recent poll:



No wonder Trump's job approval rating is sinking even further below the 40 percent mark. As Senator John McCain said at the beginning of this year, the Russia scandal is like a centipede -- because there are so many more shoes left to drop.

Let's see, what else is going on? We've got time for a quick rundown before we move on to this week's awards. Next Tuesday will be Election Day in New Jersey and Virginia, and if Democrats are truly going to have a chance at flipping either chamber of Congress next year, the Virginia governor's race may be an early sign. The Democrat is ahead, but his lead is shrinking as the Republican hammers away at sanctuary cities -- even though Virginia doesn't actually have any sanctuary cities. An honest (and disgusted) assessment of the state of the race (which he said was descending into "wild-eyed accusations" ) came from the Libertarian candidate:



Welcome to politics in Trump's America, in other words. The Washington Post has a very good rundown on not only the New Jersey and Virginia races, but also on all the other contests which will happen next Tuesday, if you're interested.

A terror attack happened in New York City, and within hours Trump was tweeting about necessary policy changes (while denigrating New York's senator, Chuck Schumer). So much for all that "we can't politicize a tragedy" that Trump and other Republicans were saying after the Las Vegas attack, eh? Schumer responded: "President Trump, instead of politicizing and dividing America, which he always seems to do at times of national tragedy, should be focusing on the real solution -- anti-terrorism funding -- which he proposed cutting in his most recent budget." Senator Chris Murphy also tweeted: "Now I get it. If the killer is an immigrant you can talk about policy change, but if he's natural born, you're 'politicizing the tragedy'."

Trump signed a law that will prevent consumers from suing their banks, but unlike all his other signing ceremonies, he didn't seem real proud of this one. There was no fanfare and no reporters in the room when Trump signed the bill behind closed doors. The White House released a statement on the signing after 5:30 P.M., and it was just one sentence long. I guess "allowing big banks to screw you over without allowing you your day in court" doesn't exactly fit in with making America great again, or something.

All this "winning" is tiring out one specific group of people -- Republican congressional committee chairs. It seems that droves of them are throwing in the towel and announcing they won't be running for re-election. Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman Meredith Kelly had a rationale for why so many of them were "dropping like flies" -- because "it's nothing short of miserable to be part of Speaker Paul Ryan's establishment Congress. These retiring Republicans have seen the writing on the wall, and they're not waiting around for the midterms." Let's hope she's right.

In foreign news, the Islamic State is about to become stateless. They are down to their last remaining towns on the border between Syria and Iraq, and their "caliphate" could entirely disappear within the next few weeks -- if not days. That's a pretty big deal, but the American media hasn't really noticed yet.

And finally, we have to at least mention how pizza has become part of the political divide. The very conservative head of Papa John's had a theory for why he's losing money -- it's all the NFL players' fault for "taking a knee." By his reasoning, as viewers tune out from football, they eat less pizza, therefore it is a clear case of cause and effect. Then Pizza Hut entered the fray, and pointed out that their sales were doing just fine, even with the NFL controversies. So much for the "fake news" from Papa John's....





An oversight was pointed out to us in the comments recently, and we found we agreed with the complaint. But when we checked this week, we found that we won't have to award the Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week retroactively, since Representative Frederica Wilson was also pretty impressive this week, as well.

Wilson was at the heart of the controversy over Donald Trump's condolence calls to dead soldiers' families a few weeks back (which we did cover in FTP (458)), but we failed to even award her an Honorable Mention, even though she clearly deserved some sort of recognition for showing such strong backbone in her fight with Donald Trump.

This week, however, Wilson had the best response to a bit of idiocy from White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, on the Civil War. Kelly, in an interview, said that the Civil War happened because of a lack of "compromise" between the North and the South. He didn't mention slavery once. He also had warm words for General Robert E. Lee, to boot.

Many historians (both amateur and professional) took the opportunity to point out the enormous and numerous compromises which had been made to forestall the Civil War: the formation of the Senate (to give rural slave-owning states an outsized influence), the infamous "three-fifths" clause in the Constitution, the Missouri Compromise (where Missouri entered as a slave state and Maine as a free state, to preserve the political balance), and the Compromise of 1850 (another power-balancing compromise). Those last two, in particular, have "compromise" right there in their names, making them hard to ignore.

But Wilson took the prize for best response, tweeting a two-part response to Kelly:



Nicely done, Representative Wilson, nicely done!

We were also impressed with all the other tweets on Wilson's Twitter feed, including some very pointed attacks at the Republican tax bill. It seems like Wilson is a rising star in the Democratic Party, so perhaps this is a Twitter feed worth following in the future.

For destroying John Kelly's ham-handed historical revisionism, , and also (retroactively) for showing such backbone in a messaging war with President Trump, Frederica Wilson is this week's Most Impressive Democrat Of The Week. Keep up the good work!

{Congratulate Representative Frederica Wilson on her House contact page, to let her know you appreciate her efforts.}





Donna Brazile dropped a real bombshell into Democratic politics this week, in an extraordinary article detailing how Hillary Clinton's campaign successfully "rigged" the primary season against Bernie Sanders. She should know, because she was at the heart of the fray, taking over the leadership of the Democratic National Committee after Debbie Wasserman Schultz had to resign, right at the start of the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Her article in Politico (excerpted from the book she has just released) is worth reading in full, but here are the key passages:



In other words, Bernie was right all along in his charge that the D.N.C. was rigging the primary election season in favor of Hillary Clinton.

While we do appreciate Donna Brazile coming forward with the truth, we also have to wonder what took her so long. Instead of raising the issue when it might have mattered, she decided to take notes and publish it in a tell-all book a full year after the election. Not exactly taking a stand when it might have changed things, in other words.

But as Brazile makes clear, we simply have no choice but to retroactively award Debbie Wasserman Schultz another Most Disappointing Democrat Of The Week, for aiding and abetting these shenanigans.

Bernie was right. The game was rigged against him, from the very start. People who denied this were wrong. With Brazile's bombshell, this is now impossible to deny.

{Contact Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz on her House contact page, to let her know what you think of her actions.}




Volume 460 (11/3/17)

When we sat down this week to construct our talking points, we quickly found that it would be impossible to present them in seven discrete paragraphs. The Republican tax plan is so complex (and so odious) that it cannot be adequately covered in just seven talking points.

Democrats need to marshal their forces in the same way they did to defeat the GOP's "repeal and replace Obamacare" effort. This is a big deal, and handing the Republicans a defeat on it would dramatically increase the chances Democrats have of taking over either the House or the Senate in next year's midterm elections.

So Democrats need to be able to quote facts and figures, to counter the trickle-down snake oil the Republicans are already trying to peddle to the public. What follows are some early figures from analysts, as well as some good talking points from Democratic politicians, in no particular order. Call it a "make your own talking point" week, in other words.

We will begin with some sage advice from professional pollsters who have poll-tested language Democrats should really consider using, because it is so effective with the public:



Negative and dramatic works, in political messaging. Remember that. There's also another very potent line of attack worth mentioning up front, because it also could be the most impactful argument to make:



That is also some very sage advice. Democrats' congressional leaders were quick to weigh in with their own colorful metaphors. From Chuck Schumer:



And, from the same article, Nancy Pelosi:



But as we said, facts and figures help make the arguments tangible. Here is just a sampling -- which will doubtless be added to as more and more economists publicly analyze the effects of the GOP bill.

According to the New York Times, the bill will raise taxes on 13 million Americans who make less than $100,000.

The Joint Committee on Taxation put out a report, which "calculates the total revenue cut of the House tax bill at $1.49 trillion over the coming decade. Nearly 80 percent of that cost, however, is attributable to business provisions."

The Washington Post's Moriah Balingit points out: "Teachers spend nearly $1,000 a year on supplies. Under the GOP tax bill, they will no longer get a tax deduction."

According to Liz Warren (on the PBS NewsHour last night), of the "two trillion dollars" that Republicans are handing to big businesses, "Wells Fargo will get the biggest benefit."

While the top income tax bracket will remain at 39.6 percent, when the bracket kicks in is being hiked astronomically (from just under a half-million dollars a year to one million dollars per year). This will result in a huge tax cut for anyone in this bracket -- even though the top rate will remain the same:



Also from the same Post article, a rundown of the numbers on who the elimination of the estate tax will benefit (contrary to Republican claims):



The New York Times ran an article on their front page titled "Math Problem Bedevils Republican Tax Rewrite," where they strip the whole effort down to the most basic of terms:



The Washington Post helpfully breaks down who will be winners and who will be losers under the GOP tax plan. The winners? "Big corporations, the super-rich, people paying the alternative minimum tax, and 'pass through' companies." The losers? "Home builders, (some) small-business owners, people in high-tax blue states, the working poor, and charities."

Those home builders are already speaking out:



Some are also pointing out what happened the last time the Republicans slashed taxes on the wealthy (under George W. Bush), just in case everyone's forgotten:



Jeff Flake, Trump's least-favorite Republican senator, weighed in on the fantasy math Republicans love to use to "prove" that tax cuts "pay for themselves." This is perhaps the most honest statement on the subject we've ever heard from a Republican, in fact:



Flake was dangerously close to giving away the entire Republican playbook, in fact, but while he inched close to the edge, he pulled back in the end. But that didn't stop one Democrat -- Senator Sherrod Brown -- from providing the big-picture view that Flake couldn't quite fully admit. This is, in fact, the best statement we've heard all week on the GOP tax plan, which is why we saved it for last:





Chris Weigant blogs at: ChrisWeigant.com
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Full archives of FTP columns: FridayTalkingPoints.com
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