CNN senior political analyst Ron Brownstein stated on Monday that the Democratic Party is in its weakest position since the 1980s, during the Reagan-Bush era, as it continues to figure out its best path forward. “If you talk to Democrats, you know, they recognize they are in a hole. I mean, the image of the party is probably in a weaker position than at any point since I think the 1980s, the Reagan and George H.W. Bush era,” Brownstein told CNN’s Audie Cornish.
Cornish and Brownstein talked about the federal government funding deadline on Friday, with Cornish noting that GOP lawmakers aimed to offset tax cuts in the federal budget, with Medicaid likely being a target. Democratic lawmakers have argued that the GOP’s proposed bill included cuts to both Medicare and Medicaid, but Republicans and President Donald Trump have repeatedly said no benefits would be cut and only identified waste, fraud, and abuse will be eliminated.
“But if you ask Democrats how they think they are going to come back, there is a debate about, you know, within the party, do you fight on every front or do you focus on the economic issues? And I think most Democrats believe their best chance of kind of getting a second look from the public in 2025 is this debate over the budget,” Brownstein continued.
“You know, this is the first time since that 1995-96 budget when Republicans are explicitly putting two things together in the same budget plans, tax cuts that are aimed primarily at the rich, and cuts in programs and health care programs, particularly Medicaid, that benefit the middle and working class. I mean, if you look at their tax cuts since then, they‘ve been sugar only. They‘ve kept the spinach far away from it,” the political analyst falsely claimed.
Brownstein suggested that the Democratic Party could tie the argument that the GOP will cut Medicaid to fund tax cuts for the wealthy to the budget, and that this could be their most effective strategy in 2025. “And I think if you ask them, as I said, how they think they‘re going to come back, they are probably putting more chips on that number than anything else,” he added.
Besides funding the government through the end of the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, Trump and Republicans want to extend the very popular tax cuts passed in December 2017, during Trump’s first term. They are set to expire next year. As for who they benefitted, a 2021 analysis by the Heartland Institute’s Justin Haskins noted: “Income data published by the IRS clearly show that on average all income brackets benefited substantially from the Republicans’ tax reform law, with the biggest beneficiaries being working and middle-income filers, not the top 1 percent, as so many Democrats have argued.”
He added:
A careful analysis of the IRS tax data, one that includes the effects of tax credits and other reforms to the tax code, shows that filers with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $15,000 to $50,000 enjoyed an average tax cut of 16 percent to 26 percent in 2018, the first year Republicans’ Tax Cuts and Jobs Act went into effect and the most recent year for which data is available.
Filers who earned $50,000 to $100,000 received a tax break of about 15 percent to 17 percent, and those earning $100,000 to $500,000 in adjusted gross income saw their personal income taxes cut by around 11 percent to 13 percent.