INDIANAPOLIS – A majority of Americans say they aren’t noticing more money in their paychecks as a result of the McConnell tax bill, a blow to Republicans who have tied their electoral fortunes to the tax law, new polls show.
According to a Politico/Morning Consult poll published Wednesday, 51% of registered voters say they haven’t seen an increase in their paycheck in the wake of the Republican tax bill’s passage. That number tends to be even higher among middle-class and working-class voters. Only 33% of voters earning between $50,000 and $100,000 reported a pay increase, and just 16% of voters making under $50,000 said the same.
One reason why most working families aren’t feeling the benefits may be because more corporations are using the benefits to enrich wealthy shareholders instead of passing along the benefits to employees. According to Goldman Sachs, share buybacks have skyrocketed by 22% among major corporations in the last six weeks as companies have given their largest investors the opportunity to cash out.
However, re-investment by those same companies, “the putative reason for cutting corporate taxes at all,” according to MarketWatch, has risen only three percent. Additionally, 83% of large companies don’t expect to boost salaries at all, said Aon Hewitt, a consultancy.
“It’s early days, yes, but the signs point to pretty much exactly what skeptics of the tax bill predicted — an upward redistribution of wealth with little obvious… payoff,” the MarketWatch piece continued.
“Unfortunately for Republicans like Congressmen Messer and Rokita banking on the tax bill to rescue their party from its abysmal approval rating, it seems like already-wealthy investors are the only folks benefitting, not the middle class,” said Michael Feldman, spokesman for the Indiana Democratic Party. “It’s just as clear now as it was when it passed; the McConnell tax bill is nothing more than a budget-buster that ultimately raises taxes on the middle class to pay for huge tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations who ship jobs to foreign countries.”
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