Democrats are celebrating the silver lining on the dark cloud of the GOP's unipartisan tax reform package; they are hoping that it is so unpopular, that along with Trump's low polling numbers, the GOP could lose the House as well as the Senate next November. Those chickens aren't ready to be counted just yet.
Astonishingly, the day of the bill's signing, a slew of large corporations has offered to pay their employees a $1,000 bonus this Christmas. What might be behind such unusual largess? AT&T and Comcast, two of those early adopters of these generous handouts are not known for their corporate social responsibility. One explanation is that is this was a deal struck with the White House, possibly for "points" or to make corporate tax cuts permanent. While, we may never know what if anything was promised, in return the GOP gets re-election insurance.
Even if the individual tax cuts for the vast majority are piffling, these will be overshadowed for all those in the private sector whose employer's signed on the the bonus scheme, one that it's worth noting is a one time payment, and far better, from an employer's perspective, than raising wages which is would be recurring and permanent. That's a huge public relations coup for the GOP, allowing them to say in November that the new tax bill put real money in a lot of peoples' pockets. The halo will have gone by 2020, but it shores up the mid-terms at a time when the GOP was looking potentially vulnerable.
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