THE FINANCIAL HARDSHIPS OF TRUMP’S FRIENDS

Robert Reich

The Environmental Protection Agency recently granted to an oil refinery owned by Carl Icahn a so-called “financial hardship” waiver. The exemption allows the refinery to avoid clean air laws, potentially saving Icahn millions of dollars.

Icahn is not exactly a hardship case. According to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, his net worth is $21.8 billion.

Over the last four decades as a corporate raider, Icahn has pushed CEOs to cut payrolls, abandon their communities, and outsource jobs abroad in order to generate more money for him and other investors. No single person has done more to harm America’s working class than Carl Icahn.

Not surprisingly, Icahn was a Trump backer from the start. Icahn’s refinery deal is chickenfeed relative to the billions he’ll pocket courtesy of Trump’s tax cut. Icahn is said to have spent $150 million lobbying for it, which makes it one of his best investments so far.

Meanwhile, real financial hardships are bearing down on Americans who are getting no help at all. Flint’s water is still unsafe. Much of Puerto Rico is still in the dark. Last week, HUD Secretary Ben “Poverty-Is-A-State-Of-Mind” Carson proposed large rent increases for families receiving housing assistance, explaining that help to the poor “creates perverse consequences, such as discouraging these families from earning more money.”

Rubbish. Low-income Americans are already working hard, many paying half their monthly incomes in rent. The Trump administration is also allowing states to demand that Medicaid recipients work, although there’s no evidence Medicaid deters people from working. In fact, many low-income Americans are able to work only because they have access to health care via Medicaid.

Trump and his enablers on Capitol Hill are proposing that people receiving food stamp work at least twenty hours a week. Yet over 40 million Americans – including many children and disabled – are already struggling with hunger, and food stamps average only $1.40 per person per meal.

In contrast to their argument that the poor need less help in order to work harder, Trump and his enablers justify regulatory and tax handouts to Carl Icahn and his ilk by arguing the rich need more in order to work harder. But despite the regulatory “relief” and giant tax cut they’re getting, America’s rich aren’t investing more than before.

Corporations have been using savings from the tax cut to buy back their shares of stock at a record pace. Icahn has been among the biggest investors pushing them to do so because buybacks raise stock prices, thereby putting even more money in his pocket.

In reality, Trumponomics is a thin veneer of an excuse for giving America’s rich – already richer than ever – whatever they want, while sticking it to everyone else.

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