House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) came under fire Monday for describing a $600 stimulus check as “significant” after she demonized bonuses, often times larger than $600, that many Americans received from the Trump tax cuts in 2018 as “crumbs,” “pathetic,” and “insignificant.”
During a floor speech on Monday, Pelosi called the coronavirus stimulus bill a “good bipartisan bill” and said that the $600 checks that Americans will receive were “significant.”
Pelosi said in part:
We can accept the short-term because we’ll have a new president during the length of that moratorium to extend it further, if necessary. We also have in the legislation direct payments, which were not in the Republican bill – to America’s working families. I would like them to have been bigger, but they are significant and they will be going out soon.
The president may insist on having his name on the check, but make no mistake, those checks are from the American people. The American peoples’ name should be on that check, no individual, because that is the source of the resources for those checks: tax-paying Americans.
However, in 2018, Pelosi demonized Americans who received pay raises, special bonuses, benefit increases, and other positive financial measures from their employers as a result of the Trump tax cuts.
Americans for Tax Reform compiled a list of over a thousand businesses that gave their employees major bonuses and pay increases and other financial rewards. Many of the businesses gave their employees bonuses of $1,000.
Fox Business reported:
After the Republican-led tax reform bill, known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, passed, many companies – ranging from Capitol One to Fiat Chrysler – decided to reinvest in their businesses by giving out worker bonuses. These efforts were largely encouraged by perceived savings from a number of provisions, including a drastically lowered corporate tax rate.
But Pelosi noted that giving out $1,000 checks when companies would likely save much more money under the law was “pathetic” – a view that is consistent with Democrats’ stance on corporate greed.
“A number of companies are attributing the tax bill for being able to give higher wages to their employees as well as being able to give a number of bonuses to their employees,” a reporter said to Pelosi during a 2018 press conference. “How do you respond to that?”
“In terms of the bonus that corporate America received versus the crumbs that they are giving to workers to kind of put the schmooze on is so pathetic. It’s so pathetic,” Pelosi responded. “And I would hope that with their big advantage of bringing money home at a very low rate, that they would invest in infrastructure and things. But our experience has been that they will do dividends. They will do stock buybacks and things like that. I think it’s insignificant.”
Political strategist and digital content creator Caleb Hull tweeted out a video of Pelosi’s remarks side-by-side from 2018 and from yesterday.
You can't make this up…
Pelosi in 2018 called $1,000+ bonuses being handed out by businesses after tax cuts "crumbs" and "pathetic" but just called the $600 stimulus checks "significant." pic.twitter.com/vVaizbk6O1
— Caleb Hull (@CalebJHull) December 21, 2020