IMMEDIATE RELEASE 27 September 2024
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND
Today’s Events in Historical Perspective
America’s Longest-Running Column Founded 1932
The emperor has no scruples
By Douglas Cohn and Eleanor Clift
WASHINGTON – Much of the media pressure is on Vice President Kamala Harris to better define the proposals and policies she would pursue if elected president. Fair enough, the voters deserve to know more about the person who could lead the country for at least the next four years.
But what about former President Donald Trump? He follows the populist’s playbook. Promise them anything. Concern not with keeping those promises.
Eliminating taxes on tips came to him after his conversation with a waitress in Las Vegas. He was giving a speech there and ran it past her; she thought it was a great idea.
Vice President Harris agreed, seconding the idea. That was a mistake. A serious person, she cannot out-populist a populist, and she should not try. To parry a populist’s pandering lies, outrageous ideas, and going-nowhere policy proposals, a serious candidate must succinctly expose the underlying flaws. Taxless tips, for example, fail on all three counts. It is a case of pure pandering that would result in a remake of the wage and tax system, and it would never pass Congress.
But Trump did not stop there. He is now on record wanting to eliminate taxes on overtime, and on Social Security. Once again, overtime is revenue. Imagine a scenario where an employer labeled more hours as overtime than normal time. Once again, the wage and tax system would fail. Taxes on Social Security are another matter. Eliminating those taxes could be justified in the same manner as certain federal disability payments are tax exempt.
All politicians make promises they might not keep. Populists make promises they never intend to keep. Here are some additional Trump examples:
He promised in 2016 to build a wall at the Southern border and make Mexico pay for it. A
smidgen of a wall has been erected, and Mexico did not contribute a penny or a peso.
Asked in the debate with Harris about his pledge to replace Obamacare with something better, Trump said he had “concepts of a plan,” a line that Harris quotes to underscore her premise that Trump is “not serious” about the proposals he makes, which brings us to tariffs, a tenet of a branch of conservative politics since the nation’s founding.
For Trump, tariffs are his go-to solution for whatever ails the economy. He promises tariffs as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods, and he is threatening an American company, John Deere, with 200 percent tariffs on the heavy machinery it manufactures if it continues with a planned move of some production to Mexico.
Congress will never go along with tariffs of this size and magnitude. Trump would have to get lawmakers to repeal legislation he signed in January 2020, the USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement), which bars tariffs on a wide range of goods.
Harris has tagged Trump’s reliance on tariffs as exhibit A of Trump-flouted proposals that are not serious. Harris accurately describes tariffs as a “Trump sales tax” since U.S. importers like Walmart would pay the tariff and pass along the increased costs to their customers in the form of higher prices. The Trump tariffs would be nothing less than an inflationary flat tax falling heaviest on people in lower income brackets.
Mass deportation is another Trump promise he cannot keep though he will surely try. He says he will get the Haitians out of Springfield, Ohio, and the Venezuelans out of Aurora, Colorado. Both groups are there legally.
He says he will deport between 12 and 20 million people he says are here illegally. But he has not offered a plan on how he would do that. These people are not sitting in their homes collecting government benefits, as Trump would have voters believe. They are working in jobs where they are needed. The economy would go into freefall if Congress allowed Trump to keep this promise. There is no question that our porous border problem must be solved, but in a responsible manner that includes such elements as increased work visas.
In the end, Harris alone cannot expose and debunk the illusions Trump is spewing. It is also up to the voters to use common sense, not to see that he who would be emperor has no clothes (as the nursery rhyme goes), but that he has no scruples.
See Eleanor Clift’s book Selecting a President, and Douglas Cohn’s latest books The President’s First Year: The Only School for Presidents Is the Presidency and World War 4: Nine Scenarios (endorsed by seven flag officers).
Twitter: @douglas_cohn
© 2024 U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.
Distributed by U.S. News Syndicate, Inc.
END WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND