In the spring, Whitewater saw two Community Development Authority press releases touting a specific part of the Trump tax bill. (See press release 1, press release 2.)
In response, this website replied
(1) with a link to a Congressional Budget Office study implying that, overall, the Trump bill will boost incomes for foreign investors but not for Americans (see About that Trump Tax Plan),
(2) a mention of how dense the release was to flack for Trump, Walker, Mnuchin, and Sensenbrenner in Whitewater (see On the Whitewater CDA’s Press Release (A Picture Reply Is Worth a Thousand Words), and
(3) to remark on the CDA’s admission that – even after a generation of CDA public spending – the particular tax provision was for “lower income communities like ours” (see A Candid Admission from the Whitewater CDA).
There’s more: William G. Gale, Hilary Gelfond, Aaron Krupkin, Mark Mazur, and Eric Toder have published Effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: A preliminary analysis:
They find that TCJA will stimulate the economy in the near term, but the long-term impact on gross domestic product (GDP) will be small. The impact will be smaller on gross national product (GNP) than on GDP because the law will generate net capital inflows from abroad that have to be repaid in the future.
The new law will reduce federal revenues by significant amounts, even after allowing for the impact on economic growth. It will make the distribution of after-tax income more unequal. If it is not financed with concurrent spending cuts or other tax increases, TCJA will raise federal debt and impose burdens on future generations. If it is financed with spending cuts or other tax increases, TCJA will, under the most plausible scenarios, end up making most households worse off than if it had not been enacted.
(Emphasis added.)
See Effects of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: A preliminary analysis (pdf) for the full report.
One has much more to write about the general and particular aspects of the Trump tax bill (including so-called opportunity zones).
There’s a more general consideration even than this, of course: Trumpism is wholly and particularly dangerous to our democratic tradition. It is, at its core, a rejection of the centuries of political and economic development on this continent, and thousands of years of political, economic, moral, and philosophical learning on which our tradition rests.
Even if, however, one were too ignorant to grasp this, it should be enough to know that federal officials Trump, Mnuchin, and Sensenbrenner have nothing good to offer Whitewater. Scampering off to thank Sensenbrenner, both as the act and as an account of it, shows how out of touch these development men are with the very town they seek to develop.
Indeed, the full application of Trumpism to this city would rend both its social and economic fabric.
Finally, as I made clear in an email to two city officials, no official in this city is owed a particular reply on this issue. That’s been my practice on smaller issues for these last eleven years, and it would be my practice on Trumpism even for the next eleven hundred, if it should take so long. The proper focus of one’s attention should be Trump, His Inner Circle, Principal Surrogates, and Media Defenders and this focus necessarily extends to officials supportive of Trumpism Down to the Local Level.
There’s no discussion to be had, no deal to be made, and no possible understanding to be reached. Trumpism, as was true with a few similarly malevolent movements from our past, deserves only a diligent opposition until its end.