Americans for Tax Reform is tracking the growing numbers of companies that have announced plans to hand out bonuses, deliver pay hikes or other tax cut dividends to employees. Click To Tweet
MacIver News Service | Jan. 15 , 2018
By M.D. Kittle
MADISON, Wis. – This is what the left said would happen if U.S. taxpayers got to keep more of their money:
PEOPLE WILL DIE.
Seriously, they predicted the Republican-led tax reform package that President Trump signed into law last month would kill people.
That’s real, substantive, positive impact – otherwise known as the exact opposite of Armageddon.
“The GOP is monstrous; their policies kill, starve & maim,” tweeted actor-comedian Rob Delaney.
MSNBC and Vanity Fair contributor Kurt Eichenwald took to Twitter to proclaim, “America died tonight. Economic suicide, Millennials, move away if you can. USA is over. We killed it.”
And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called the tax relief package “Armageddon.”
Here’s what really happened:
Two million Americans – and counting – will receive bonuses thanks to tax cuts.
“Just twelve days into 2018 the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act has changed the nation for the better. American companies are raising wages, paying bonuses, extending operations and increasing 401(k) contributions,” wrote Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform on the organization’s website.
ATR is tracking the growing list of companies that have announced plans to hand out bonuses, deliver pay hikes or other tax cut dividends to employees.
Approximately 150 businesses – from AAON, giving $1,000 bonus checks to its 2,000 employees to Zions Bancorporation, which will deliver pay raises for two-fifths of its workforce, and $1,000 bonuses for nearly 80 percent of employees.
“Congress, working closely with the President, took a monumental step to bring taxes paid by U.S. businesses in line with the rest of the industrialized world,” said AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson. “Tax reform will drive economic growth and create good-paying jobs. In fact, we will increase our U.S. investment and pay a special bonus to our U.S. employees.”
AT&T announced it would pass out $1,000 bonuses to its 200,000 employees, and increase capital expenditures by $1 billion.
That’s a real, substantive, positive impact – otherwise known as the exact opposite of Armageddon.
Wisconsin businesses are getting in on the act, too. Copperleaf Assisted Living, based in Stevens Point, will hand out bonuses of up to $600 to its 175 employees – thanks to the tax cut.
“It’s really to bring awareness to what’s going on in our country and how it impacts them … and that businesses and corporations do want to do the right thing,” Krista Mendyke, who owns the company with her husband, Jim, told the Stevens Point Journal last month.
Late last week, Walmart, the nation’s largest private sector employer, announced it would spend $400 million in the fiscal year on bonuses. Employees will get checks of up to $1,000, depending on their time of service. Those with 20 years or more receive the maximum bonus. The mega retailer also will boost pay and expand benefits.
Norquist said Walmart and other U.S. companies, thanks to a reform package that significantly lowers the corporate tax burden (one of the highest in the world), are now able to do what the big-government crowd has failed to do through mandates.
“I always get a kick out of the politicians who go, ‘We’re going to steal all of this money from companies and do all these things poorly that (business) might have done well if we hadn’t stolen the money in the first place,” he said told MacIver News Service last week on the Dan O’Donnell Show in Milwaukee. “And we are seeing the second part of that; if you stop taking their money, they go out and bid up for the value of new and better employees.”
Liberals, who have spent the past year pushing a doom-and-gloom message on tax cuts, seized on Walmart’s other announcement Thursday that it would close 63 of its Sam’s Club wholesale stores, including some in Wisconsin.
Walmart said the decision to shutter the stores was a business decision, done to “better align our locations with our strategy.” The move, contrary to assertions on the left, was not initiated to somehow offset the costs of bonuses and pay increases at its thousands of other stores.
Pelosi has criticized the billions of dollars in bonuses and pay hikes as mere “crumbs.”
“In terms of the bonus that corporate America received versus the crumbs that they are giving workers to kind of put the schmooze on is so pathetic. It’s pathetic,” the class warfare peddler said.
“The opponents of lower taxes lied for a year about what this tax bill meant,” Norquist said.
And the bonuses are just an appetizer.
U.S. employees will soon see more money in their paychecks, the direct result of the tax cuts.
“Standards of living go up, pay goes up, when you have more productivity,” Norquist said. “Even if you are becoming more productive, if the government skims for the top that which you are producing, you don’t see it in your pay.”
“Stop with the tax increases, reduce taxes, and it makes all Americans, all companies more productive,” he added.
Listen to MacIver’s interview with Grover Norquist on News/Talk 1130 WISN here: