RSS

Justin Miller

 Justin Miller is a senior writing fellow for The American Prospect.

Recent Articles

Trump’s Big Tax Cut Is Unadulterated Trickle-Down Fundamentalism

In a scramble to put his name on at least one success in his first 100 days, the president relies on an old supply-side standby.   

Justin MillerApr 26, 2017
(AP/Carolyn Kaster) Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, right, and National Economic Director Gary Cohn, arrive in the briefing room of the White House in Washington, Wednesday, April 26, 2017. trickle-downers.jpg D onald Trump has been in office nearly 100 days with little to show for it, save for signing a bunch of fancy parchment that orders the roll back of several environmental and worker protections. His fragile ego is driving his need to do something big. And so he’s doing what Republicans generally do when all else fails: propose steep tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. On Wednesday, Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and chief economic adviser Gary Cohn unveiled their tax plan , one that, as expected, is centered on unadulterated trickle-down economics. Echoing his presidential campaign’s tax plan, Trump’s proposal calls for a 20 percent cut in the tax rate for corporations—from the current rate of 35 percent down to 15 percent. Furthermore, he wants to slash...

Q&A: Will Trump Bring Real Reform to Troubled H-1B Visa Program?

As part of his America First agenda, the president has targeted the skilled guest-worker visa program. But substantial fixes will require navigating a complex political landscape. 

Justin MillerApr 25, 2017
Flickr Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. L ast week, President Trump issued an executive order calling on his federal agencies to conduct a review of the H-1B visa program, which allows employers to hire “skilled” foreign workers. About 460,000 H-1B visa workers are employed in the United States, predominantly in high-tech sectors like information technology and software development, with up to 85,000 new visas awarded by a random lottery each year. But the program has long been criticized as a way for U.S. companies to pass over skilled American workers and instead hire foreign workers at far lower salary rates than their American counterparts. As well, the program has increasingly been captured by companies that use the program to offshore American jobs. Meanwhile, these foreign workers are tethered to their employers, making them vulnerable to exploitation . For years, members of Congress have tried to address rampant abuses in the system only to run into resistance...

The GOP’s Overtime Reform Plan: Fraud Masquerading as Flexibility

With Obama’s landmark overtime expansion blocked in the courts, conservatives roll out a plan that would undo overtime pay as we know it. 

Justin MillerApr 18, 2017
(CQ Roll Call via AP Images) Rep. Martha Roby, R-Ala., and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, hold a news conference in the Capitol to announce the introduction of the "Working Families Flexibility Act," on Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2015. trickle-downers.jpg A mid endless political cacophony in Washington, D.C., House Republicans are quietly advancing legislation that would drive a freight train through a central tenet of New Deal-era labor law: overtime. Earlier this year, Republicans introduced the Working Families Flexibility Act , a bill that would amend the Fair Labor Standards Act to allow private-sector employers to offer workers comp time instead of the premium time-and-a-half pay for overtime hours worked. As the bill proposes, workers would have the option to get an hour and a half of paid time off in the future instead of cash for every hour of overtime worked—an option that public-sector employers have been able to offer since the 1980s as a means for cutting costs. Labor advocates say that...

Gary Cohn’s Glass-Steagall Support Is a Trickle-Down Trojan Horse

Trump’s top economic adviser—our Trickle Downer of the Week—is veiling his support for more deregulation behind the rhetoric of financial reform. 

Justin MillerApr 13, 2017
(Associated Press) Gary Cohn, director of the U.S. National Economic Council, arrives to a swearing in ceremony of White House senior staff in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C. L ast week, reports surfaced that Gary Cohn—the White House’s top economic adviser, former president and chief operating officer of Goldman Sachs, and purported foil to Steve Bannon’s “economic” nationalism—said in a closed-door meeting with the Senate Banking Committee that he supports legislation that would cordon off Wall Street’s speculative investment from commercial banking operations. That is, he supports some form of reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, the landmark Depression-era financial regulation law that forbade commercial banks from engaging in risky speculative investments. Congress passed and Bill Clinton signed the repeal in 1999, a move that helped lay the groundwork for the Wall Street-fueled economic meltdown in 2008. Naturally, you might question whether Trump’s Wall Street...

Pages