Dubious Achievements January 3, 2019January 5, 2019 Tax cuts and deregulation. Republican triumphs. But arguably, neither has been a triumph at all. Paul Krugman: The Trump Tax Cut: Even Worse Than You’ve Heard Skeptical reporting has still been too favorable The 2017 tax cut has received pretty bad press, and rightly so. Its proponents made big promises about soaring investment and wages, and also assured everyone that it would pay for itself; none of that has happened. Yet coverage actually hasn’t been negative enough. The story you mostly read runs something like this: The tax cut has caused corporations to bring some money home, but they’ve used it for stock buybacks rather than to raise wages, and the boost to growth has been modest. That doesn’t sound great, but it’s still better than the reality: No money has, in fact, been brought home, and the tax cut has probably reduced national income. . . . Eric Lipton, et al: The Real-Life Effects of Trump’s Environmental Rollbacks For nearly two years, President Trump has pursued an aggressive, far-reaching effort, lobbied for and cheered on by industry, to free American business from what he and many of his supporters view as excessive environmental regulation. . . . at stake is the quality of the air we breathe and the food we eat, the cleanliness of the rivers that flow past us, and the pace at which the climate is changing. After decades of legislation and regulation, the environment in the United States continues to get cleaner. What has changed under Mr. Trump in most cases is [that] the pace of improvement has been slowed in a number of key areas compared to what it would have been if the Obama rules had been preserved. A third dubious achievement? Defending America from desperate asylum seekers, as we once defended her from Jews fleeing Hitler. Today, with Democrats in control of the House — and Mitt Romney in the Senate, for that matter — we just might start to do better.