Crapo: Don’t mischaracterize benefits of the 2017 Trump tax cuts | Opinion
Tax cuts
The Idaho Statesman Editorial Board’s summary of “One Big Beautiful Bill” mischaracterizes the 2017 Trump tax cuts and misleads Idahoans about what’s at stake if they expire. The tax cuts lowered rates, made the code more progressive, and middle-class families reaped the largest benefits.
Idahoans benefited from lower rates, a doubled child tax credit and standard deduction, a new small business deduction and a simpler tax filing process. Expiration means the average Idaho family would see a tax hike of $2,500 and tax rates on small business could rise to 43%.
The “One Big Beautiful Bill” recognizes the solution to our debt crisis isn’t to tax Americans more, but to grow the economy and spend less. The Council of Economic Advisers estimates Trump’s economic agenda will increase GDP by 4.2 to 5.2 percent and increase workers’ wages by $6,100 to $11,600.
Extending existing tax policy won’t increase the deficit, but failing to address waste, fraud and abuse in spending programs will. This bill achieves more than $1.5 trillion in savings — the single largest reduction in mandatory spending in history.
Extending good tax policy, delivering targeted relief and reining in wasteful spending is the best way to restore economic prosperity.
U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho
‘Big Beautiful Bill’
The “Big, Beautiful Bill” promises transformative change; a closer look reveals it benefits the richest few while leaving most of us behind. Small businesses and workers taxed on tips may see some relief. However, the true winners are the ultra-wealthy and large corporations. Estate tax cuts and breaks for big businesses raise the question: Why do the already prosperous need more tax relief, leaving the middle class and poor to bear the hidden costs of a growing national debt?
Those harmed by the bill include our most vulnerable: the poor, elderly, young and veterans. Each will lose vital support. Medicaid and SNAP recipients, already struggling, will see their benefits slashed, affecting children the most cruelly. Federal agency cuts to programs like food safety and disease research will impact us all. The poor will suffer the most and have few resources to cope.
The true consequences of this bill are far from beautiful. We must ask: Who does this bill really serve, and who is left behind? The solution is not more tax cuts for the wealthy, but a fairer distribution of the financial burden of governing. To date our congressional delegation has been unresponsive. I hope they will listen.
Dean Hagerman, Meridian
Trump’s actions
The president has manipulated the American psyche and attention to Los Angeles and immigration, where polling shows he’s underwater even before L.A. He has shifted attention away from his flip-flopping on other issues, and U.S. courts have very largely rejected his edicts through mere executive orders. His “big beautiful bill” that is a disaster for working families, is bordering on disaster and rejection in the U.S. Senate, despite the go-along-to-get-along of Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch.
His unlawful tariffs are in flux and disarray. No wonder he crows about ICE, probable Proud Boys, and 3%ers masked and unidentified contractors “assisting” ICE. Turn your attention from the wannabe authoritarian who will waste $74 million on a military parade aggrandizing his ego leaving the municipal government of D.C. to repair the streets. You and the media must focus on his horrible administration and diminish his hyperbole and lies about L.A.
Donald Shaff, Boise
Fighting tyranny
My father’s war ended 80 years ago. He went ashore at Normandy on D-Day, but he was injured in France, and he came home on a hospital ship full of wounded Americans. My war ended 50 years ago. After three tours in Viet Nam, I was the only living passenger in a cargo plane full of Americans who had paid the last full measure of devotion.
Jesus told us, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand.” These days it seems we’ve never been more bitterly divided, and those unalienable rights listed in the Declaration of Independence — to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness — have never been in greater jeopardy than they are now.
We who wore our country’s uniform didn’t do it to gratify a wannabe king who needs a forty million dollar military parade for his birthday. We did it to defend “We the people” against tyranny. But if we don’t remember our belief in one nation, under God, with liberty and justice for all, tyranny will win, and Jesus will just have to shrug and say, “I tried to warn you.”
Charles Yates, Caldwell
Musk and Trump
Well, could we be any more humiliated on the world stage than with the ongoing soap opera between Musk and Trump. We should deport Elon Musk and impeach Donald Trump. Trump has committed so many illegal, unconstitutional and impeachable acts, that I can’t even count them anymore. But for starters, he has made Congress impotent by usurping many of their powers and responsibilities, and they have just stood by and let it happen: for example, imposing tariffs that have unnecessarily disrupted the global economy, taking away the power of the purse by impounding previously authorized funding, ordering the elimination of the Department of Education (which he has no authority to do), and terrorizing the U.S. Institute of Peace. How about illegal extortion of universities and law firms, illegally firing civil servants without cause, and taking over the DOJ to investigate anyone who disagrees with him? Now we’ve become a police state, with innocent people being kidnapped by masked, unidentified armed terrorists without warrants (yes, these people are innocent because they haven’t been found guilty). And we have lost our right to free speech if Donald Trump doesn’t agree with us. Is this really America? Enough already!
Pat Entwistle, Boise