“There is still a lot of thinking on the right that if big corporations are happy, they’re going to take the money they’re saving and reinvest it in American workers. In fact they bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.”
There’s no way around it: What Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in a recent interview with the Economist about the GOP’s tax bill was unhelpful to his party.
That doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Independent analysts say the tax bill hasn’t yet had a measurable effect on the average American — GDP has increased in 2018, but income levels were stagnant for March.
Still, arguing that the tax bill’s corporate tax rate cuts aren’t benefiting the average worker is the exact opposite of what Republicans want to say about their single major legislative accomplishment, just six months before they try to win elections on that legislative accomplishment.
Republicans are especially perplexed by Rubio given that he stood with President Trump two week ago at a small-business roundtable in Florida and thanked the president for “fighting for the American worker” on tax reform.
Rubio’s more critical comments of the tax bill also play right into the hands of Democrats, who argue that the bill helps corporations at the expense of the American worker. They knew Rubio had handed them a political gift in acknowledging the lack of trickle-down effects of the tax bill so far.
“Did Senator Rubio actually say this on tax reform?!?” read the subject line of an email from Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) office to reporters on Monday. “Rubio spills the truth about Heller’s tax scam,” Nevada Democrats blasted in an email as they try to unseat Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), who, like Rubio and every other Republican senator, voted for the bill. How much lasting damage this will do is debatable. Republicans say that unless Rubio is on some sort of anti-tax-bill crusade, they feel pretty confident this one paragraph in this one story won’t derail the bill’s steady up-and-up standing with the public. (The interview, published last Thursday, took days to get noticed by Washington.)
But you could also argue that Rubio is bashing the core objective of the tax bill routinely.
A spokeswoman said Rubio wasn’t being critical of the entire bill. Rather, he was hammering home a point he made during the tax debate: that the bill lowered the corporate tax rate too much, at the expense of helping workers in a meaningful way. Rubio wanted a more robust child tax credit than the final bill gave, and he was upset about that.
“If you look at all the benefits that are flowing [to corporations],” Rubio told the New York Times in December, “it was important to be able to go back and do more for working families. Otherwise, the message is what it has been for 25 years from both parties — that is, when push comes to shove, we want your vote, but we’re not that concerned about the working class.”
When he criticized aspects of the tax bill as not being working-class-friendly in December, it was lumped in (or lost) amid Republicans’ various gripes about the bill.
Five months later, Rubio is still making the case that the tax bill didn’t do enough for the working class, which raises the question: Why? Rubio is one of Republicans’ most effective communicators and most prominent senators. When he talks, people listen. His words carry more weight, especially since Rubio is the only Republican senator frequently talking about what he thinks is wrong with his party’s only major legislative accomplishment since winning control of Washington.
Some Republicans have suggested that Rubio, one of the more ambitious politicians in the Senate, is trying to stake himself out as a populist. It’s clear from his comment to the Times that he is concerned his party didn’t approve a tax bill that passes the populist test.
Public opinion polling suggests the tax bill needs all the help it can get to be sold to voters.
Polls show a steady incline in support since the bill passed in December, but a majority of Americans still disapprove of the bill — including 47 percent of independents, according to a March Quinnipiac University poll.
“The general sense of ‘an okay’ economy really has trouble penetrating,” said Steve Bell, a GOP budget analyst.
It’s also possible the jury is still out on how the tax bill benefits Americans: Fifty-nine percent of Americans said in a March CBS News poll that it’s too soon to tell whether they are paying more or less in taxes.
Some Americans are seeing bumps in their take-home pay in 2018, while others are on the receiving end of one-time bonuses from corporations that credit the tax bill for their generosity. But the biggest effect of the tax bill will come in the spring of 2019, when Americans file their taxes under it for the first time.
That is months after Americans will vote in November for who should represent them in Congress. Republicans, pushing against the head winds created by an unpopular and controversial president, are trying to hold on to their majorities in the House and Senate. The future promise of this tax bill is a key piece in their campaign literature.
And that’s why Rubio’s apparent, and repeated, dis of the tax bill is the exact opposite of helpful for Republicans right now: Perception matters. The only question is how much perception damage he is doing and will continue to do.