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Commentary: Ted Cruz and his GOP colleagues are pushing yet another tax break for the 1%

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Commentary: Ted Cruz and his GOP colleagues are pushing yet another tax break for the 1%

America’s beleaguered 1%, backed by their supporters in Congress, are pleading for your sympathy.

They say they’re treated unfairly by the federal tax code, you see, because inflation has sapped the value of their most cherished tax break, the preferential tax rate on capital gains. And they want it fixed.

Inflation, says Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the leading proponent of this idea, has been “turning gains into an unfair tax burden.” Last year, he proposed to rectify this injustice via the Capital Gains Inflation Relief Act of 2025.

That was a rerun of similar bills he introduced in 2018 and 2021. None of them passed, so this time around, he’s proposing to circumvent Congress entirely by persuading President Trump to enact the break by presidential fiat.

The argument proponents make sounds logical until you think about it.

— Steve Wamhoff, Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (2019)

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The reaction by legal and economic experts outside the GOP echo chamber has been overwhelmingly negative. Whether Trump could enact the tax break via executive order is dubious , they say, and in any event the break is unwarranted and economically unwise.

“The argument proponents make,” wrote Steve Wamhoff of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in 2019, “sounds logical until you think about it.” The legal and economic considerations haven’t changed since then.

As Wamhoff observed, there’s a certain amount of superficial logic underlying the argument that inflation in effect raises the tax rate charged on capital gains — the profits investors pocket from increases in the value of their stocks and bonds over time.

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That’s because of how the gain is calculated. The math starts with the “basis,” the price originally paid for the asset, and proceeds to the final sale price. The difference is subject to the capital gains tax.

If the asset has been held for more than a year, the gain is taxed at a rate that tops out at 20%. This year, the rate is zero for taxpayers with income up to $48,350 ($96,700 for couples) and 15% for those with income up to $533,400 ($600,050 for couples). The top rate of 20% kicks in for those with incomes higher than that.

Gains on assets held for less than a year are taxed at the higher rates due on ordinary income, which this year top out at 37% on incomes over $640,600 ($768,700 for couples).

The issue raised by the proponents of change is that the basis is calculated on a pre-inflation value, but the gain on post-inflation values. Therefore, they assert, at least some of the gains reported by investors are due not to real advances in an asset’s value, but to inflation. They say no one should be taxed on inflation.

To illustrate, if you bought a share of stock for $5 a decade ago and then sold it for $9, your capital gain of $4 is subject to the tax. But if the value’s increase matched the inflation rate over that period, Wamhoff noted, “you have not genuinely profited.” Indeed, if your gain was less than the inflation rate, you might even be charged tax on an inflation-adjusted loss.

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The remedy that Cruz proposes is to adjust the original basis for inflation. Say that due to inflation alone, that share of stock might have gained $3 in value. If one raises the basis by $3, the real taxable gain would be $1, not $4, quite a difference for the taxpayer.

There are a few problems with this narrative. Among the chief rationales for the lower tax rate on capital gains is to counter the effect of inflation. Adding the inflation indexing of the basis would mean accommodating inflation twice.

Another issue would be finding the right inflation index. Proponents of indexing typically cite the consumer price index, but that’s only one of numerous inflation measures the government calculates. Because the index tracks changes in the price of purchased goods, it’s not necessarily the right measure to adjust the values of capital assets such as stocks and bonds.

Then there’s the question of why only capital gains should be singled out for a special inflation adjustment. “Inflation distorts all forms of capital income and expense, not just capital gains,” observed Elena Patel of the Brookings Institution earlier this month. “Interest, dividends, rents: all of them partly reflect inflation.”

The impact of this change on the federal budget can’t be overlooked. The cost over 10 years, according to the Yale Budget Lab, would be $169 billion if the indexing rule were imposed only on newly purchased capital assets, but nearly $1 trillion if it were applied retrospectively to stocks and bonds already held by investors.

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Also at issue is whether America’s rich really need another tax break. The tax cuts delivered by Republicans and Trump in 2017, during his first term, are estimated to be worth $1.5 trillion or more over 10 years. They were made permanent by the GOP budget bill enacted last year; the fiscal hawks at the Committee for a Responsible Budget estimate the cost of those provisions at more than $2.4 trillion over the next decade.

All that comes on top of a general reduction in top marginal federal income tax rates that have reduced them to the lowest level in a half-century.

As for the assertion by Cruz that inflation “will boost savings, spur investment, and create jobs nationwide,” there’s little evidence for that. Economists generally have calculated that whatever economic growth could be ascribed to the change would be washed out by the revenue loss from inflation-indexing only new purchases, and utterly swamped by the cost of indexing all holdings, past and future.

Nevertheless, Republicans have been relentless in trying to secure this tax break for their rich patrons. Legislation to enact the indexation of capital gains taxes was introduced in 1978, 1983, 1994, 1997 and 1998. Cruz introduced his own bills in 2018, 2021 and 2025.

All those efforts flopped in Congress. Accordingly, the advocates of inflation-indexing of capital gains have dusted off a workaround that first surfaced in 1992, during the George H. W. Bush administration. This is for the Treasury to rule on its own authority that “basis” means “inflation-adjusted cost.”

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The Department of Justice and the Treasury subjected the question of whether the change could be made without congressional action to their gimlet-eyed scrutiny, and turned thumbs-down. “Not only did I not think we could, I did not think that a reasonable argument could be made to support that position,” then-Atty. Gen. William Barr said later. The Bush administration dropped the idea.

But Cruz, along with Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) have urged Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to revive it. Eight Republican lawmakers joined the parade, asserting in a March 5 letter that such a move would be “a straightforward administrative action grounded in fairness and sound tax policy.” (The Treasury Department didn’t respond to my request for comment.)

It should go without saying that with Democrats campaigning on an “affordability” platform, this idea sounds like political poison. It’s impossible to see it as anything other than a handout to the rich. How do we know this? Because it’s only the rich who have any significant exposure to the capital gains tax.

According to IRS data, about 75% of the income of the median American household, which earned about $84,000 in 2024, came from wages and only about 1.1% from capital gains. In the wealthiest households — those with $10 million or more in annual income— only about 12% came from wages but nearly half came from capital gains.

That may understate the value of capital gains for the wealthy. As Ed Kleinbard, the late taxation guru at USC, was fond of pointing out, the capital gains tax is our only truly voluntary tax. That’s because no one has to pay it until they sell the asset. If they hold it until their death, their heirs pay nothing, thanks to the “step-up” in basis for inherited wealth, which revalues the asset to its price as of the death of the owner, extinguishing the tax forever on what could be decades of gains.

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After 48 years of unsuccessful politicking, one might be tempted to call the idea of indexing capital gains a certified washout. But when it comes to the GOP’s cherished hobby horses, it’s always too early to tell.

Bruce Bartlett, who served as an adviser to the Reagan and H. W. Bush administrations but has since become a most percipient critic of modern GOP economic nostrums, says the GOP’s peculiar genius is to keep even its unpopular policies simmering away in the expectation that, at some point in the future, a window will open up to get them enacted. That’s how they got abortion rights rescinded by the Supreme Court in 2022 — after 49 years of fighting against Roe vs. Wade.

When a GOP proposal fails to pass, Bartlett told me, “They put it on the shelf when the time isn’t right and when the situation changes they pull it off the shelf, dust it off, and they are ready to go again. … The left doesn’t do this. It waits until the political opportunity is ripe to even begin preparing. By the time they are ready, the opportunity has passed.”

The Republican fixation on relieving their rich patrons of the burden of capital gains taxes isn’t surprising. As I’ve reported in the past, the capital gains preference rate is the most valuable tax break the wealthy receive.

That’s because, in addition to being voluntary, as Kleinbard noted, it’s uncapped — unlike, say the deduction of mortgage interest.

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This proposal doesn’t make sense even on its own terms. Isn’t it time for the proponents to drop the subject already?

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Devin Nunes Departs Trump Media After 4 Years as C.E.O.

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Devin Nunes Departs Trump Media After 4 Years as C.E.O.

President Trump’s social media company, which has consistently lost money and struggled with a flagging share price, announced Tuesday that it was replacing Devin Nunes as its chief executive officer.

The announcement offered no reason for the sudden departure of Mr. Nunes, a former Republican congressman from California. Mr. Trump had tapped him to run the company, Trump Media & Technology, in late 2021.

The announcement was made in a news release by the president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who is a company board member and oversees a trust that controls his father’s 115-million-share stake in Trump Media. President Trump is not an officer or director of the company.

Mr. Nunes said in a statement on Truth Social, which is Trump Media’s flagship product, that it was an “appropriate time” for a new leader with experience in media and mergers to “steer Trump Media through its current transition phase.”

Trump Media has incurred hundreds of millions in losses, and its shares have performed poorly since the company went public by completing a merger with a cash-rich special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, in March 2024. The stock, which ended its first day of trading around $58 a share, closed Tuesday at $9.82.

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Shares of Trump Media trade under the symbol DJT, which are President Trump’s initials. Truth Social has emerged as the main social media platform for Mr. Trump to communicate his policy decisions and opinions to the world.

Last year, Trump Media took in $3.7 million in revenue and recorded a $712 million net loss.

In December, Trump Media announced a plan to merge with TAE Technologies, a fusion power company. The all-stock deal, which was valued at $6 billion at the time, would create one of the first publicly traded nuclear fusion companies.

Trump Media said in February that it was considering spinning off its Truth Social platform in a merger with another cash-rich SPAC, Texas Ventures Acquisition III Corp.

Mr. Nunes is being replaced on an interim basis by Kevin McGurn, who has been an adviser to Trump Media since the end of 2024. Mr. McGurn, a former executive at Hulu, the streaming service, was listed in a recent regulatory filing as the chief executive of Texas Ventures.

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The Trump Media release announcing the management change provided no update on the merger with TAE Technologies or the proposed SPAC deal for Truth Social.

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Netflix plans to buy historic Radford Studio Center

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Netflix plans to buy historic Radford Studio Center

Streaming entertainment giant Netflix is in negotiations to buy the historic Radford Studio Center lot in Studio City.

Netflix plans to purchase the Los Angeles studio that has been home to generations of landmark television shows, including “Gunsmoke” and “Seinfeld,” according to two people with knowledge of the pending deal who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

The studio’s previous operator, Hackman Capital Partners, defaulted on a $1.1-billion mortgage in January. Investment bank Goldman Sachs took over the property and is in talks with Netflix to sell it for between $330 million and $400 million.

Representatives for Hackman and Netflix declined to comment on the planned sale.

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Culver City-based Hackman Capital Partners and Square Mile Capital Management teamed up to buy the Radford Avenue property from ViacomCBS in 2021 with a winning bid of $1.85 billion, after a competitive battle for the 55-acre studio beloved by the television industry.

At the time, the staggering price tag underscored the value — and scarcity — of TV soundstages in Los Angeles as content producers scrambled for space to shoot TV shows and movies to stock their streaming services. It was one of the largest-ever real estate transactions for a TV studio complex in Los Angeles.

Since then, production has substantially declined in Southern California. L.A. continues to battle the loss of production to other states and countries, as well as the lingering effects on the industry of the pandemic and the 2023 dual writers’ and actors’ strikes. Cutbacks in spending at the major studios after a surge in streaming-fueled TV production have further damped film activity in the region.

Founded by silent film comedy legend Mack Sennett in 1928, the lot became known as “Hit City” in the decades after World War II as popular TV shows such as “Leave It to Beaver,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Will & Grace” were made there. The storied lot gave the Studio City neighborhood its name,

Netflix, which has a market cap of about $455 billion — more than double that of Walt Disney Co. — has maintained its dominance in the global streaming business with more than 325 million subscribers.

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The Los Gatos-based company has production offices worldwide, including facilities in Albuquerque, Brooklyn, London, Madrid and Toronto.

Netflix had secured an $82.7-billion deal to buy Warner Bros. studios and streaming services in December, but withdrew from the bidding war in late February after Paramount Skydance offered $31 a share. As part of the switch, Netflix was paid a $2.8-billion termination fee.

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Kevin Warsh, Trump’s Pick to Lead Fed, Faces Senate at Tricky Moment

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Kevin Warsh, Trump’s Pick to Lead Fed, Faces Senate at Tricky Moment

Kevin M. Warsh, President Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Reserve, has spent years refining his pitch for why he should get one of the most powerful economic jobs in the world.

At his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, he will have to convince Senate lawmakers that he is ready to step into the role, which has become politically explosive amid Mr. Trump’s relentless attacks on the institution and its current chair, Jerome H. Powell.

Mr. Warsh, who is scheduled to testify before the Banking Committee at 10 a.m., plans to commit to being “strictly independent” on decisions related to interest rates, according to his prepared remarks. He also plans to tell lawmakers that he is unbothered by Mr. Trump’s incessant calls for substantially lower borrowing costs. And he will use his opening statement to underscore his focus on disrupting the “status quo” at an institution he said just last year was in need of “regime change.”

“In a time that will rank among the most consequential in our nation’s history, I believe a reform-oriented Federal Reserve can make a real difference to the American people,” he plans to tell lawmakers, adding: “The stakes could scarcely be higher.”

Mr. Warsh, 56, faces significant hurdles to winning confirmation. He has broad support among Republicans, who control the Senate and can confirm him along party lines. Yet his candidacy has stalled because of an ongoing investigation by the Justice Department into Mr. Powell and his handling of the Fed’s headquarters renovations.

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Mr. Powell’s term as chair ends May 15, but Mr. Warsh looks increasingly unlikely to be in place by then. That’s because Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina — a Republican on the Banking Committee who has expressed support for Mr. Warsh — has vowed to block any attempt to confirm a new Fed chair until the legal threats into Mr. Powell are resolved. For Mr. Tillis, the investigation is a blatant attempt to coerce Mr. Powell into lowering rates, undermining the Fed’s independence and confirming the politicization of the Justice Department.

“I’m not going to condone bad decision-making and bad behavior,” Mr. Tillis told reporters on Monday in reference to the Justice Department’s lack of evidence of any wrongdoing.

The department has vowed to continue its investigation, despite numerous legal setbacks.

“I think ultimately, he will be confirmed,” Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, another Republican on the committee, told reporters on Monday. “I just don’t know what decade.”

Mr. Warsh’s ascent would mark a homecoming for the Wall Street financier, who served as a Fed governor from 2006-11.

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Since leaving the Fed, he has amassed assets worth well in excess of $100 million, according to financial disclosures submitted before his hearing. Those have drawn scrutiny because Mr. Warsh repeatedly invoked “pre-existing confidentiality agreements” to avoid disclosing the details behind several of his investments. He has said he would divest a substantial amount of his assets before taking the job.

The global financial crisis dominated Mr. Warsh’s first tenure at the Fed, thrusting him into the middle of discussions about how the central bank should respond to the threat of bank failures, turmoil in financial markets and a painful recession that followed. Mr. Warsh, then the youngest-ever member of the Board of Governors, was initially supportive of the Fed’s efforts to shore up financial markets by buying enormous quantities of government bonds and expanding its balance sheet to ease strains in financial markets and support growth by keeping market-based rates low.

But he soon soured on subsequent efforts to buy more bonds and resigned in protest. That experience has stuck with Mr. Warsh, who has made a smaller balance sheet a pillar of his plans if he takes over as chair.

Mr. Warsh would also be likely to usher in changes to how the Fed communicates its policy views, having expressed misgivings about its strategy of providing so-called forward guidance, or hints about how interest rates may change in the future to guide expectations. He has also suggested that policymakers across the Fed system should speak far less. Mr. Powell held a news conference after each rate decision, or eight a year, and delivered speeches with regularity. Mr. Trump’s pick to join the Fed last year, Stephen I. Miran, often speaks multiple times a week.

“Once policymakers reveal their economic forecast, they can become prisoners of their own words,” Mr. Warsh said in a speech last year. “Fed leaders would be well served to skip opportunities to share their latest musings. The swivel-chair problem, rhetorically waxing and waning with the latest data release, is common and counterproductive.”

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What is far less clear is how much Mr. Warsh would heed the president’s demands for lower interest rates. Mr. Trump said he would not pick someone for chair who did not support lower borrowing costs.

Mr. Warsh sought in his opening statement to downplay the costs of a president’s voicing his opinions about rates, saying central bankers must be “strong enough to listen to a diversity of views from all corners, humble enough to be open-minded to new ideas and new economic developments, wise enough to translate imperfect data into meaningful insight and dedicated enough to make judgments faithfully and wisely.”

Earlier this year, many officials at the Fed saw a path to gradually lower rates as the impact of Mr. Trump’s tariffs faded and inflation restarted its slide back toward 2 percent after almost of year of stalling out. The war in Iran — and the energy shock it has unleashed — has upended those forecasts, however, prompting officials to turn wary about lowering rates.

Mr. Warsh will face questions on Tuesday about the economic impact of the war and how it has changed his thinking around the Fed’s ability to lower rates. While at the Fed, he was known as an inflation hawk who often argued against providing policy relief for fear that it could stoke price pressures. He also said the Fed should aspire to engage in rule-based policymaking that stems from formulas that prescribe how officials should set rates based on levels of inflation and employment.

While campaigning to be chair, Mr. Warsh embraced the need for rate cuts, arguing that there was a path for lower borrowing costs because of his plans to shrink the balance sheet, which would lift longer-term rates that then could be offset by lowering short-term ones. He also argued that higher productivity from the boom in artificial intelligence could unleash higher growth without stoking inflation, which could give the Fed more space to lower rates than otherwise would be the case.

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In his opening statement, Mr. Warsh made clear, however, that a failure to bring down inflation, which has been stuck above the Fed’s 2 percent target for roughly five years, would strictly be the Fed’s fault, suggesting that he would shoulder the blame if he did not bring it back down during his tenure.

“Inflation is a choice, and the Fed must take responsibility for it,” he will tell lawmakers.

Megan Mineiro contributed reporting.

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