Trump spent quite a bit of time during his final months in the White House, less than humbly bragging about the various ways he was “saving” the American people and the economy throughout the massive, deadly pandemic that was pretty much his fault — including unemployment benefits, shamefully low stimulus checks, and payroll tax cuts. But as it turns out, as we’ve frankly come to expect from Donald Trump, pretty much none of it turned out to be as great as he claimed.
According to a new report from POLITICO, many appointees from Trump’s administration took advantage of the then-president’s offer to delay their payroll tax in an effort to help keep them afloat and stimulate a cracking economy during the pandemic. However, now that Donald has left the White House in a cloud of shame and President Biden has taken his place, working to repair what the previous administration has broken, those appointees have found themselves shocked, bitter, and angry as they get sacked with thousands in payroll tax delays that the ex-president promised to have forgiven but never followed through on.
POLITICO reporters Brian Faler and Daniel Lippman wrote, “‘If the indebtedness is not paid in full within 30 calendar days, we intend to forward this debt to the Department of Treasury, Treasury offset program, for further collection,’ reads one letter to a former White House official, demanding she pay $1,500. That has left some shocked and angry. One former official called her $1,300 bill ‘unacceptable,’ saying she and her colleagues ‘gave our time and effort to this agency and this is how we’re getting paid back.’ Said another, asked to pay almost $1,200: ‘It’s just a very unfortunate situation.'”
All of these issues, of course, hail from a payroll tax holiday that Donald Trump forced through with an executive order after Congress rebuffed his proposal.
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“In August, he issued an executive order allowing employers to put off paying their workers’ share of the 12.4 percent Social Security tax for the rest of the year. The idea was to boost consumer spending by putting more money in the pockets of millions,” the report reads. “But the initiative was widely rejected by private sector employers, in part because they feared workers would be unprepared to pay the money back. It was mandatory, though, for federal employees making less than $4,000 per biweekly paycheck, and the government began implementing it in September.”
Many appointees from the Trump administration were blindsided by the ex-president’s November loss, with several of them staking their careers and livelihoods on a second Trump term. Once that didn’t come to fruition, many of his appointees struggled as they lost their jobs and benefits in one fell swoop — and now they’re being sacked with thousands in payroll taxes to boot.
I guess that’s what you get for trusting Donald Trump.
Featured image via screen capture
