Joe Biden has some tough words about Trump today:
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden called Trump's actions "half-baked."
"This is no art of the deal," Biden said in a statement. "This is not presidential leadership. These orders are not real solutions. They are just another cynical ploy designed to deflect responsibility. Some measures do far more harm than good."
Trump said he believes that the unemployment aid will be "rapidly distributed," even though there are potential challenges over the legality of his executive action.
But Biden also called out what Trump was really doing: cutting Social Security.
In an emailed statement addressing the president's order, Biden said that such a move would “undermine the entire financial footing of Social Security.”
The presumptive Democratic nominee said that unlike the 2012 payroll tax plan put forth by the Obama administration, Trump’s executive order does not appear to include “protections or guarantees that the Social Security Trust Fund will be made whole.”
“He is laying out his roadmap to cutting Social Security,” Biden said. “Our seniors and millions of Americans with disabilities are under enough stress without Trump putting their hard-earned Social Security benefits in doubt.”
Biden is absolutely right about this:
If he gets his way, Trump’s “payroll tax holiday” ― an unpopular proposal on both sides of the aisle ― will apply to people making less than $100,000 per year and begin Sept. 1, lasting through the rest of the year. But critics argue that cutting the payroll tax would hurt Social Security and Medicare as the struggling pandemic economy has forced Americans to rely more heavily on both programs.
The cuts would “weaken those two bedrock retirement and health programs,” a group of economists at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank, said in a statement earlier this week. Since the start of the crisis, Trump has repeatedly spoken in favor of the move. But the economists argued that employers are incentivized to hold onto the employee’s share of the tax, rather than passing it on, because they are ultimately responsible for making sure payroll taxes go to the government.
“Thus, postponing the deadline to pay payroll taxes would likely have no effect on employees,” they said. “Employers could simply withhold the tax and keep the money until the later payment deadline.”
And FYI:
A big fan of payroll tax cuts, Trump signed an executive action Saturday deferring the employee portion of payroll taxes -- 6.2% for Social Security and 1.45% for Medicare -- for workers making less than $100,000 a year through the rest of 2020.
If he's reelected, Trump said, he plans to forgive the taxes and make permanent cuts to the payroll taxes.
"I'm going to make them all permanent," he said.
We have to get rid of Trump, Moscow Mitch and all his enablers in the Senate this year to make them pay for this bull shit. Click below to donate and get involved with Biden’s campaign and these Senate Democrats campaigns:
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Theresa Greenfield (D. IA)
Paulette Jordan (D. ID)
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