{"id":6439,"date":"2017-10-12T11:57:58","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T18:57:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=6439"},"modified":"2017-10-12T11:59:25","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T18:59:25","slug":"orwellian-press-briefing-huckabee-sanders-defends-trumps-repeated-tax-rate-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2017\/10\/12\/orwellian-press-briefing-huckabee-sanders-defends-trumps-repeated-tax-rate-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"In ‘Orwellian’ Press Briefing, Huckabee Sanders Defends Trump’s Repeated Tax Rate Lie"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since announcing his 2016 presidential run, Trump has been incorrectly claiming at rallies and in interviews that Americans pay the highest tax rates in the world<\/p>\n

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by\u00a0Julia Conley, staff writer<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n
October 10, 2017 (CommonDreams.org.)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissed a reporter’s question about the president’s repeated misleading statements about tax rates. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In an exchange one journalist described as “Orwellian,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders doubled down in her Tuesday press briefing on President Donald Trump’s repeated lie that the U.S. is the “highest-taxed nation in the world”\u2014clarifying that when he says that, he’s talking about the corporate tax rate\u00a0even though that is not what he says time and time again.<\/span><\/p>\n

A reporter from\u00a0One America News<\/em>\u00a0pushed back, but Huckabee Sanders insisted there was no discrepancy between Trump’s statements and the truth.\u00a0Ultimately she told the reporter they would just have to “agree to disagree” on whether two different claims were actually the same thing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump most recently made the claim in a televised appearance in the Oval Office just before the press briefing. He also said it in an\u00a0interview<\/a>\u00a0over the weekend on Mike Huckabee’s talk show on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, in a\u00a0tweet<\/a>\u00a0last month, in\u00a0campaign<\/a>\u00a0speeches during the 2016 election, and at rallies in\u00a0Youngstown, Ohio\u00a0<\/a>and\u00a0Cedar Rapids, Iowa<\/a>\u00a0this year.<\/p>\n

During the presidential campaign, the Pew Research Center\u00a0found<\/a>\u00a0that Americans pay less in taxes than most developed nations. The Tax Policy Center has also\u00a0found<\/a>\u00a0that tax revenue makes up only about 26 percent of the United States’ GDP. In countries with strong social welfare programs, like Sweden, France, and Finland, citizens pay far more.<\/p>\n

While the nominal corporate tax rate for U.S. corporations is higher compared to many other developed nations, the effective rate\u2014due to loopholes, deductions, and other tax avoidance schemes written into the tax code\u2014keeps effective rates exceedingly low. Despite that, Trump continues to claim they are unduly high while repeatedly suggesting in front of non-corporate audiences that his main concern is with lowering American families’ tax rates.<\/span><\/p>\n

A number of journalists and Trump critics denounced Huckabee Sanders’s characterization of the matter as a simple difference of opinion between the reporter and the White House\u2014rather than a question of misleading statements by the president.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n