Newsweek Discovers 'Boosts' When Convenient for Trump
The article, dated August 2018, discusses a proposal for $2,000 checks gaining traction. The 'top economic official' cited was Kevin Hassett, former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Trump. While the initial article might have been timely then, its re-publication or renewed attention in a different context (like, say, during a pandemic when actual stimulus checks were debated)
highlights how mainstream outlets can reheat old news to serve present narratives, or perhaps distract from current economic realities. The key omission is the lack of context regarding *why* this specific 2018 proposal is suddenly relevant, or how little it ultimately materialized into actual relief for ordinary Americans, who instead faced record corporate bailouts and tax cuts for the wealthy.
One might wonder if the media's memory is simply incredibly long for some ideas, and conveniently short for others – like the $2.3 trillion in tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy signed into law by Trump in 2017 (source: Congressional Budget Office, 2017) which saw little 'boost' for the average American. Perhaps a 'top economic official' should have focused on that impact instead of
ephemeral proposals. How many decades do we wait for these 'boosts' to trickle down?