Kent Strang - Did Trump's tax cuts help working families?

One year after President Trump's tax package became law, supporters say it's putting more money back into Americans' pockets. Critics argue the biggest benefits went to large corporations and higher-income earners.

Kent Strang, Managing Director of Americans for Prosperity, joins the show to discuss the impact of the tax law, what it has meant for workers and businesses, and whether it has delivered on its promise to help working families.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Welcome back to the Lawrence Larson Show. It's a pleasure to welcome to the program Kent Strang, who is the managing director of Americans for Prosperity. Kent, welcome back to the program. I want to talk about Donald Trump's uh tax package, the working families tax cut, signed into law a year ago. And I I think well of the idea, but it's not hard to find liberals who want to badmouth it all day long.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Lars, it's great to be with you. Thank you for having me back.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Sure, I'm glad to do it, but would you mind explaining to my audience? Because they're going to hear this was a tax cut primarily for the rich. It's like a broken record that the liberals and the Democrats in this country can never get away from. And yet the numbers tell an entirely different story, don't they?

SPEAKER_00 0:52

They absolutely do. The working families tax cut is a proven success for hardworking Americans because it keeps their hard-earned dollars where they belong in their pockets while successfully blocking what would have been the biggest tax hike in American history. It would have cost a family of four fifteen hundred dollars in a tax hike. Meanwhile, the typical taxpayer is getting $2,300. They're paying that less in taxes thanks to the working families' tax cut. So they're seeing tax relief. They're keeping more of their money. They're not giving it to Uncle Sam. And the provisions in this bill help small businesses and they help families. They're not going to big, gigantic corporations like the left wants you to believe.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Well, and that's the that's the concern I want to push back against, because I hear them saying, yes, but they've cut spending. Well, frankly, most of what I've heard about cutting spending on the last 18 months of the Trump administration has been about cutting the waste, fraud, and abuse. And that if we cut that out of the system, there will be plenty of benefit left for the people that that program is actually aimed at, won't there?

SPEAKER_00 2:04

Well, that's absolutely right. And look, we we have an unsustainable amount of spending and an unsustainable amount of debt. And I am proud that the one big, beautiful bill, the Working Families Tax Cut, reduced spending by a trillion dollars, that it invested in border security because our border was an absolute disaster when this bill passed, and that it allowed 7 million Americans to be able to have access to health savings accounts so they can make health care decisions instead of big insurance and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. Also, when we look at the provisions for small businesses, they can deduct 100% of their equipment. What does that allow folks to do? That allows them to buy more equipment for their small business, they can invest in their small business, they can thrive, they can grow, they can hire more employees. I was just talking to a lady in North Carolina named Vicky, and she said, thanks to the working families tax cut, I invested in more equipment and I expanded my business. I opened a second location, I hired more people, I can reinvest in my community. That's what we're seeing all across the country. It's helping people like Vicky.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Well, and I I I really am glad you brought that up because there have been so many times I've explained to people, I said, if I buy a piece of equipment for my small business, because the radio show is a small business, Lars Radio LLC. And I said, in the past, uh I would have to take a computer or another piece of equipment and expense it out over a number of years, which made it more expensive at the front end to be able to buy that equipment. But if I'm a small business, no matter what kind of small business you are, and you can exp you can say, hey, this year we were really profitable. Let's buy some of that new equipment we were planning to buy, and we'll take it against our tax liability for this year. You know you get the entire expensing that year, which makes it easier as a small company to be able to buy that stuff without having a giant impact, or say buying a piece of equipment planning to take it against profits that you haven't even made. They're going to be made two or three years from now. And then you get to two or three years from now, and you don't have the profitable year you thought you were going to have. It makes everything a lot more fraught as you're trying to run your business.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

That is absolutely right. And Americans for Prosperity, we talk to Americans every single day. We're out on the road right now with an effort we're calling Camp Prosperity. We've knocked on 27 million doors. We meet families, we meet small business owners. That provision alone comes up everywhere we go because it is so meaningful. They they get to legitimately take that investment in their country and in their company. And it it allows them to not only invest in that equipment, but they're they're they're growing, they're they're moving into bigger locations, they're buying more machinery for their business, they're adding those employees. We we also speak to so many people like, oh, well, now I get to invest more into my community. I get to sponsor that Little League team. And it's funny how you see their that their immediate thought is how can I help my community in addition to how do I help my small business. But also it locked in the 21% corporate rate. And that that certainty also allows those businesses to prepare for the future and think about how they're going to get by, not just in the next year, but the next five, the next 10, the next 20 years.

SPEAKER_01 5:30

Well, and the other thing, and I don't know how we can get somebody to do the math on this, but I'm talking to Ken Strang, who's managing director at Americans for Prosperity. But one of the biggest problems for Medicaid and Medicare, and they're two different programs, one for the poor, one for the old the elderly, is that they compensate people in the medical business 65, 70 cents on the dollar. And so you constantly hear from people saying, Well, I've got Medicaid or I've got Medicare, but I can't find a doctor who's willing to actually extend service to those people. And it's because they're paying the doctor pennies on the dollar instead of paying 100 cents on the dollar, and it makes it difficult for doctors and hospitals and clinics to do it. I keep hoping if they can cut enough of the waste, fraud, and abuse and reduce the unnecessary dollars out the door that are just going to fraud artists, and you could actually increase that compensation and say, you know, if the government's going to buy you uh health insurance, we'll pay 95 cents on the dollar to every doctor. Then you'll get more doctors saying, okay, I I can treat patients for that amount of money. They can't do it at 65 cents on the dollar.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Right. And it kills the incentives. Look, we need to make sure that the incentives are aligned here, and it's such a difficult part. And and we know that the waste, fraud, and abuse is is rampant, and it's something that we have to absolutely have to pull out. And and and the critics are quick to show that, oh, it's it's cutting services. Well, what they need to do is they need to find the waste, the fraud, and abuse, and and they're they're conflating finding waste, fraud, and abuse with cutting services and moving people who should not be in these programs. There have been report after report of people who are no longer living, people who should not be on these programs, people who are signed up as ghost accounts, where they're signed up on multiple times on the same name, the same social security number, and they're removing those folks. And we have to clean those roles up so we're not, taxpayers are not on the hook for all these liabilities. And we absolutely have to do that because there's still so much waste, fraud, and abuse that I'm glad that this bill starts that, but there's still so much more that we can do. We haven't found all the waste, fraud, and abuse in this government.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

No, we haven't. And Ken, like I was watching one of Nick Shirley's videos the other night. I haven't talked to Nick Shirley, but I don't know the guy, but his work is very good. And he said, What's supposed to be a senior center? And there are maybe a hundred people there. And he's asking the manager of the center. He says, The records have you down as having 7,700 members. Are they here? And the guy was clearly just an employee, and he said, We don't have 7,700 members. Well, the government is paying you for 7,700 members. If that's the kind of service that we're cutting, I'm good to go with cutting those kinds of services. Stop the waste, fraud, and abuse. That is Kent Strang, who's managing director of Americans for Prosperity. It's a Thursday, and you're listening to the Lars Larson Show. If you want to send me an email, talk at LarsLarson.com. Check me out on Instagram, got a face for radio, and you can always tell Alexa to play the Lars Larson show.