MSNBC's Joe Scarborough said the coronavirus outbreak had exposed President Donald Trump's tax cuts as a sham.
The president signed a bill that would provide relief to airlines and small businesses, but the "Morning Joe" host said some large corporations should have invested their tax savings in a rainy day fund instead of plowing the tax cuts back into their own businesses.
"A lot of people are obviously concerned about Washington moving very quickly on relief, on economic relief," Scarborough said. "Very concerned about bailouts of companies, of corporations that got a windfall of billions and billions of dollars just a couple years ago from President Trump's tax cuts. Instead of investing it in their workforce, instead of expanding operations, instead of putting away cash reserves for a rainy day like now, they spent 95 percent on stock buybacks. The airline industry was especially guilty of this."
Scarborough said that completely predictable, and he did so himself.
"Everybody was talking about how it was going to expand the economy, we'd get 4 percent, 5 percent, 6 percent growth because companies were going to expand their workforce," he said. "No. We said it on this show repeatedly before it passed. These huge companies were just going to take the money and do stock buybacks. So, you know, I know this administration likes easy bailouts -- $16 billion check to the big farm agricultural interests. Write a $50 billion check to airline companies."
"I think it is safe to say," Scarborough added, "most airline companies don't want to bail out Boeing right now, the other companies that spent 95 percent of their tax cuts on stock buybacks, when, again, the sell from the administration was, we need to pass this because it'll help workers, it will help the economy. They will reinvest in their businesses and grow their businesses and operations. That never happened. What about this idea from Andrew Ross Sorkin? What about instead of bailouts, we extend zero interest loans, especially to small business owners who are really hurting right now?"