Nothing in the tax bills would change that.
It’s been kept by the executives and investors. But profits have been soaring for years, and little of the wealth has trickled down to workers.
Trump keeps tweeting that slashing corporate tax rates will enable companies to use their soaring profits to build, hire and give workers raises. The more pressing question is: What will the Republican tax package do for them? Workers may be asking why that is, with the unemployment rate so low. Gaddafi has not yet stepped down from power, and until he does, Libya will remain dangerous.Wages are inching up under Trump, but they were inching up under Obama. By not doing so last night he gambled that he may never need to:ĭespite the success of our efforts over the past week, I know that some Americans continue to have questions about our efforts in Libya. If Gaddafi hangs on somehow, then eventually Obama will have to come up with an answer. The hole in Obama's speech was his refusal to offer any limiting terms for US engagement. The US took no further military action, Gaddafi remained in power, and the Lockerbie tragedy followed. In 1986 Reagan ordered US warplanes to attack Gaddafi's regime.
Indeed, by Giuliani's and McCain's standards Ronald Reagan was far weaker than Obama towards Libya and Gaddafi. Rudy Giuliani – for some reason elevated to foreign policy pundit by Piers Morgan on CNN – accused Obama of timidity: "You either go in or you don't go in." John McCain hilariously did the same: "When Reagan attacked Tripoli he didn't assemble a coalition." In doing so, Obama rebuffed the shrill charges of those Republicans who want to use any stick to beat him with. That is not something we can afford to repeat in Libya. But regime change there took eight years, thousands of American and Iraqi lives, and nearly a trillion dollars. Thanks to the extraordinary sacrifices of our troops and the determination of our diplomats, we are hopeful about Iraq's future. To be blunt, we went down that road in Iraq. So would the costs, and our share of the responsibility for what comes next. The dangers faced by our men and women in uniform would be far greater. We would likely have to put US troops on the ground, or risk killing many civilians from the air. If we tried to overthrow Gaddafi by force, our coalition would splinter. But the ultimate step, of an invasion to drive out Gaddafi, could not be justified: "We must always measure our interests against the need for action," Obama stated. That involved a degree of having it both ways, but Obama did deliver a crushing dismissal of more aggressive action against Gaddafi. The needle Obama had to thread last night was distinguishing intervention in Libya from the other potential conflicts in the region, while still making a robust case for taking action that didn't extend towards an invasion. We also had the ability to stop Gaddafi's forces in their tracks without putting American troops on the ground. We had a unique ability to stop that violence: an international mandate for action, a broad coalition prepared to join us, the support of Arab countries, and a plea for help from the Libyan people themselves. In other words, when the global temperature is "just right". Last night, in his televised address from the National Defense University at Fort McNair, Obama introduced an intermediate category for US military intervention: when there is support from the international community, when widely-defined US "interests and values" are at stake, when there is support from regional actors, and when there is a clear and urgent humanitarian demand.