Donald Trump: King of the Welfare Queens

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

Tonight in Cleveland Joe Biden and Donald Trump will meet on a patriotically festooned stage for the first of three scheduled presidential debates.  The host will be Chris Wallace of Fox News.  Trump had expected to march into Cleveland still basking in the afterglow of having just nominated his third conservative justice to the US Supreme Court, but, as often happens with Trump, the lead story changed abruptly when - on Sunday night - the New York Times suddenly revealed that it had acquired fifteen years of Trump's federal income tax returns.  

For the past four years Trump has fought valiantly to keep his tax returns secret, often putting forth the excuse that they could not be released because he was the subject of an on-going IRS audit.  The IRS, for. its part, has said that its audit would not prevent Trump from making his returns public - as all presidential candidates have been doing for decades.

But still Trump persisted in keeping his tax returns secret - causing some skeptics to believe that he might have something to hide.

Well, according to the report from the New York Times on Sunday evening, the skeptics were right.  Donald Trump was hiding plenty!

A quick overview of the recently released returns shows that Trump paid no income tax at all in ten of the fifteen years covered by the returns, and that for the years 2016 and 2017 - returns that were filed the first two years Trump was in the White House - he paid on $750 each year.  Trump, for his part, exploded that the Times report was untrue and "fake news."   He also said that he paid plenty in state taxes and used New York as his example - although he has not released any state tax returns either.

The returns, as reported by the New York Times, also indicated that Trump used creative measures for lowering his reportable income - things like claiming $70,000 for a personal hair stylist to help with his television appearance, and a "consultancy" fee for his daughter, Ivanka.

The returns that were released by the New York Times on Sunday also showed that Trump is carrying a debt load of $421 million, a nugget of information that led House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others to suggest that having that level of debt burden made Trump susceptible to pressure from people who controlled that debt, and in particular foreign business executives and politicians who might want special favors or concessions from government for propping Trump up.   Trump's debt, in other words, made him a security risk.

Hillary Clinton accused Trump during the 2016 presidential debates of not paying taxes, and instead of denying her claim, Trump embraced it and said that not paying taxes made him "smart."

Today I came across this gem on Twitter:

"I don't think the conservative take on @realDonaldTrump paying no taxes should be: BECAUSE HE'S SMART! I've paid nearly 50% of my income in taxes, year after year, and any system that allows billionaires to pay ZERO is unspeakable corrupt. How about changing it, Democrats?"

 

The author of that tweet wasn't Bernie Sanders, or AOC, or any member of "the squad," or some liberal Hollywood celebrity.   The person who wrote that tweet was conservative columnist Ann Coulter!  Like so many of the rest of us, Ann apparently pays her taxes and she has a burgeoning resentment of those ultra-rich Americans who feel that paying taxes is just for the "little people."

My own tax rate to the feds is nearer 30% than it is 50%, but I still pay plenty - and I pay every damned year - and I'm glad to do it.  I depend on government for a wide range of services, and I know that things like roads, and schools, and libraries, and hospitals, and ambulances cost money.  Everyone who is a member of our society and benefits from that association needs to participate in paying the bills.  Our taxes are the dues that we pay for the benefits and protections of being Americans - and we all should be doing our part.

Conservative politicians and country music singers used to single out extremely low income individuals who accepted government assistance and referred to them as "Welfare Queens."  Most of those people lived in dire circumstances and paid little or no income tax, yet sometimes qualified for payments or foodstuffs from the government.  That isn't to say that they didn't pay taxes because, like the rest of us, they paid sales tax on everything they purchased.  But certain people wanted us to focus on these drastically poor people and to see them as the reasons that government could not afford to do other things.

But in reality it was the ultra-rich who were sabotaging the funding pact between the government and its citizens.  The rich were avoiding their taxes and blaming government's failures on the poor.

Well, for once Ann Coulter is right - and for once I agree with her.  The rich benefit greatly from the peace, stability, infrastructure, and opportunities offered by the government of the United States, and they need to participate in its upkeep - by paying their taxes.

Anyone who can afford $70,000 for a hairstylist can pony up taxes to provide our troops with basic body armor, our hospitals with ventilators, our cities with clean water, our rural areas with broadband access, and our school children with books.   

Anything less and you are gaming the system - like one of those dreaded Welfare Queens!