Trump and the Kennedys for Tax Cuts, Kamala Not

Now that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is in President Donald J. Trump’s corner, the Republican standard bearer should work the Kennedys into his campaign pitch. He should remind voters that RFK, Jr. and former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii are among the Democrats who have endorsed his candidacy. Trump also should promote his current and future tax cuts by invoking the Kennedys’ support for tax relief.

“As President, Robert F. Kennedy Jr will propose a revenue-neutral plan that helps both the lower and middle classes, subsidized not by raising rates on high income households, but rather by closing loopholes and eliminating deductions that only benefit the wealthy,” his still-active website states. (READ MORE from Deroy Murdoch: Donald J. Trump: Kommandant-in-Chief?)

While this is hardly a full-throated supply-side battle cry, it also is far from the usual Democrat demand for higher taxes to soak the rich.

RFK, Jr. has offered seldom heard, encouraging words on tax reduction, according to the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. He told CUP’s dinner guests earlier this year, “I learned from my uncle that cutting taxes increases prosperity.”

And what a lesson President John F. Kennedy taught his nephew and the nation!

“Our tax rates, in short, are so high as to weaken the very essence of the progress of a free society, the incentive for additional, return for additional effort,” JFK said from the White House on August 13, 1962. In a televised address, he called for “a permanent basic reform and reduction in our rate structure, a creative tax cut creating more jobs and income and eventually more revenue.”

JFK added:

It will include an across the board, top to bottom cut in both corporate and personal income taxes … The billions of dollars this bill will place in the hands of the consumer and our businessmen will have both immediate and permanent benefits to our economy. Every dollar released from taxation that is spent or invested will help create a new job and a new salary. And these new jobs and new salaries can create other jobs and other salaries and more customers and more growth for an expanding American economy.

JFK even foreshadowed the Laffer Curve, 12 years before then-University of Chicago Economics Professor Arthur Laffer first illustrated on a cocktail napkin how lower marginal tax rates can yield higher tax revenues by taking a smaller slice of a bigger economic pie. As JFK predicted, “By removing tax roadblocks to new jobs and new growth, the enactment of this measure next year will eventually more than make up in new revenue all that it will initially cost.”

JFK offered similar words that winter.

“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high, and tax revenues are too low,” he told the Economic Club of New York on December 16, 1962:  “The soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.”

Alas, JFK never signed his tax cut into law. He was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Barely three months later, however, President Lyndon Baines Johnson approved the Revenue Act of 1964, that February 26.

JFK/LBJ dropped the top income tax rate from a shocking 91 percent to a merely outrageous 70 percent. The bottom rate slid from 20 percent to 14 percent, and the corporate tax fell from 52 percent to 48 percent.

Even these relatively modest tax reductions fueled good times that lasted until President Richard Milhous Nixon exited the gold standard, ignited inflation, and endured the 1973-74 Arab Oil Embargo.

While RFK, Jr. learned from these events, Kamala Harris must have flunked U.S. History. She ignores JFK’s wise example. Also, while she plagiarized Trump’s proposal for no tax on tips, she cannot wait to torpedo his bounty-fueling Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). (READ MORE: Judge Merchan Is a Hoodlum in Black Robes)

“On Day One, we’re going to repeal that tax bill,” Kamala said, verbatim, at least four times in 2019: July 11, July 14, November 1, and November 22 (ironically, the 56th anniversary of JFK’s death).

Kamala couldn’t care less that TCJA did the most for those with the least.

“Income data published by the IRS clearly show that on average all income brackets benefited substantially from the Republicans’ tax reform law, with the biggest beneficiaries being working and middle-income filers, not the top 1 percent, as so many Democrats have argued,” Heartland Institute scholar Justin Haskins wrote December 4, 2021 for The Hill.

Haskins further explained that “filers with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $15,000 to $50,000 enjoyed an average tax cut of 16 percent to 26 percent in 2018, the first year Republicans’ Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect and the most recent year for which data is available.”

“Filers who earned $50,000 to $100,000 received a tax break of about 15 percent to 17 percent, and those earning $100,000 to $500,000 in adjusted gross income saw their personal income taxes cut by around 11 percent to 13 percent,” Haskins continued.

“By comparison, no income group with an AGI of at least $500,000 received an average tax cut exceeding 9 percent, and the average tax cut for brackets starting at $1 million was less than 6 percent,” Haskins elaborated. “That means most middle-income and working-class earners enjoyed a tax cut that was at least double the size of tax cuts received by households earning $1 million or more.”

None of this phases Kamala, who yearns to hike an array of taxes:

• She would let Trump’s entire TCJA expire, thus raising taxes on nearly every taxpayer.

 

• Top income-tax rate: From today’s 37 percent to a proposed 39.6 percent — Up 7 percent.

 

• Corporate tax: 21 percent to 28 percent — Up 33.3 percent.

 

• Capital gains: 20 percent to 44.6 percent — Up 123 percent.

 

• Stock buyback tax: 1 percent to 4 percent — Up 300 percent.

 

• Unrealized capital gains: 0 percent to 25 percent — Up ∞ percent via a mathematically unlimited increase in a now non-existent tax. Kamala dreams of taxing stocks and other assets while they are held and before they are sold. Absent other ready cash, millions of Americans would have to liquidate holdings merely to pay this neo-Marxist tax. This would be the first cannon blast in Kamala’s War on Investment.

As only he can do, U.S. Senator John Kennedy (R – Louisiana) — no relation to the Hyannis Port Kennedys — hilariously dismantled Kamalanomics Friday on Fox News Channel’s Hannity program.

Kennedy, who served with then-Senator Kamala Harris (D – California), said: “I have described Ms. Harris as AOC without the bartending experience. I think that’s accurate. That’s how she’ll govern.”

Senator Kennedy ridiculed Kamala’s flip flops on a fracking ban, prohibition of private insurance, and her reincarnation as Margaret Thatcher in a pantsuit (my description). He called her “A wolf promising to be a vegan, if the sheep would just vote for it.”

Senator Kennedy lampooned Kamala’s proposed tax hikes and price controls on groceries. “Miss Harris helped create the worst inflation in 40 years … Her plan to try to lower prices looks like it was put together with vodka and darts.”

“Defining Bidenomics is easy,” Senator Kennedy concluded. “It’s paying more to live worse.”

Less knee-slapping, but far more inspiring, is Trump’s contrasting vision for America. Rather than rising taxes, burgeoning outlays, creeping subsidies, and galloping socialism, the Republican nominee offers hope and change.

For starters Trump would not repeal TCJA. He would make it permanent.

Trump would not tax tips — an idea so good that Kamala shoplifted it.

Trump also would end taxes on Social Security benefits. The elderly should face zero taxes on retirement income that they earned, typically through four decades of FICA Tax payments.

“We will end the era of inflation, mayhem, and misery under Kamala and Crooked Joe and unleash safety, prosperity, and peace for Americans of every race, religion, color, and creed,” Trump told voters in Glendale, Arizona, on August 23, hours after RFK, Jr. endorsed him.

Trump added: “Together, we will deliver low taxes, low regulations, low energy costs, low interest costs, low inflation — and that’s for everyone. We’re talking about everyone. We want to make sure everyone can afford groceries, a car, and a home.”

Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor.

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