Two nights ago, on the floor of the Senate, Senator David Perdue, gave a thirteen minute speech on the upcoming vote on the Tax Reform Bill. In his calm, logical way, he laid out a clear argument against the media and opposing party and the misinformation that is consistently spread by both.
Sen. Perdue addressed the cycle of inaccurate or incomplete studies or statements, the spreading of those falsities by liberal news sites, and the lack of fact checking.
On Monday, The Tax Policy Center released a study saying that the House plan to change the tax code would raise taxes on 25% of American families. The study didn’t even survive a full day. It was retracted later that afternoon. It’s not even publicly available online to review. But do you know what is still public? The Democrat statements that came out of that report, false statements highlighting this study as reality. The website Vox posted a story about the Tax Policy Center study titled, ‘The Numbers Are In And The House Republican Tax Bill Raises Taxes On Nearly One-Third of Americans.’ Sure, they say they’ll update the story once new numbers are available. In the meantime, this headline and story are still in existence as if they were true. Why wouldn’t they take down the story? Why wouldn’t they change the headline? Multiple members of the Minority Party have said the tax framework supported by President Trump would raise taxes on families earning less than $86,000 per year. This talking point is so wrong that even The Washington Post came out and said so. They gave this claim four Pinocchios. That’s the worst rating you can get on their fact check.
Sen. Perdue went on to call out the members of both chambers who supported this tax plan, with all it’s cuts, right up until President Trump took office. Now, he says, the “minority party” is opposed because it simply makes good politics.
That’s the only explanation I see. It just doesn’t make any sense. Why would someone oppose giving the middle class a tax break? Why would someone oppose making America competitive again? Why would someone oppose bringing billions of dollars of U.S. profits back into the United States so they can be reinvested in the economy and create jobs?
The numbers are hard to ignore and so is Sen. Perdue’s voice of reason.
If Democrats were acting in our national interest, we’d be hearing about the studies showing that, on average, Americans are projected to get a pay increase between $4,000-$9,000 under this plan. We’d be hearing about how families making less than $86,000 per year are actually getting a tax cut. Again, that’s a point even The Washington Post acknowledged. We’d be hearing about how lowering the corporate tax rate and ending the tax on repatriated earnings will make us more competitive with the rest of the world. We’d be hearing about the economic growth that could result from these changes.
Nothing that comes out of Washington (or any other political chamber across this great Nation) is perfect. But facts are facts and no elected official or media outlet should be unaccountable to the truth. Somehow, at some point, we have allowed our standards to lessen and are ok with “if it bleeds, it leads” as an acceptable standard of reporting.
And we, as the electorate, are as much to blame as the media. We must demand accuracy and the uncolored, unbiased truth from the media. In today’s fast paced, instant gratification world, we cannot afford anything less than the highest standard when it comes to the spreading of information. Knowledge is power, but only when it is factual and true.