JUAN GONZALEZ: But they also expect large contributions from local, city and state governments --
ROBERT REICH: Exactly.
JUAN GONZALEZ: -- that would also be us paying, as well.
ROBERT REICH: Exactly. And the state governments are not going to just be able to come up with the money. They are going to have to raise taxes, as well. And so, you've got a system that is Trumpian in all its dimensions, again, without any understanding of the common good. It is going to cost more people more money, and it's not even going to be infrastructure where we most need it. I mean, where we most need it is repairing old bridges and old highways and water treatment facilities. But where do private investors want to see infrastructure? Where can they get the biggest return? On brand-new highways and brand-new bridges, that will basically skirt the poor areas of this country, not only the poor rural areas, but many of our minority communities.
JUAN GONZALEZ: I wanted to ask you about the -- in terms of the tax cut, because I remember, before the election, both Democrats and some Republicans, like John Kasich, were talking about using an amnesty for corporate profits that were being held offshore, when they would repatriate it, to use that for infrastructure, because that was a one-time shot in the arm to the U.S. economy. And that didn't happen, actually. Most of that money seems to have gone into the overall plugging the gap of this plan. But you've also focused on stock buybacks and how companies are using stock buybacks now with this tax plan, while all the attention is going into the pittances that they're giving in bonuses to their workers.
ROBERT REICH: Exactly. And those bonuses have proven to be very, very tiny relative to the amount of profits that companies are now sinking into buying back their shares of stock, which is a technique used by companies to artificially raise stock prices. Why are they doing this? Largely because CEO pay is so intimately related to share prices, that CEOs, even in an era like this, when there's almost no reason for share prices to go up -- in fact, they're going down -- but artificially keep them up, or keep them from falling as much as they would, by buying back the shares of stock. Now, this has nothing whatever to do with the promise that the Trump --
JUAN GONZAEZ: And how has the buybacks increased now, in the past year, compared to previously?
ROBERT REICH: Buybacks were already at a record level in 2017. And so far this year, they are even at a higher level. So, all of that corporate tax in the new tax plan that's gone into effect, that was supposed to inspire and encourage a lot of new investment -- you know, the trickle-down economics theory -- well, it's already proved to be bankrupt.
AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this month, Senator Sanders questioned Budget Director Mick Mulvaney about President Trump's budget plan.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Explain to me the morality of a process by which we give the third-wealthiest family in America -- major contributor, I might add, to the Republican Party -- over a billion dollars a year in tax breaks, and yet we cut a program which keeps children and the elderly warm in the winter.
MICK MULVANEY: Here's the morality of the LIHEAP proposal, Senator: 11,000 dead people got that benefit the last time the GAO looked at it. That's not moral, to take your money, to take my money, to take the money from the people that you were just mentioning --
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: Eleven thousand people got it who shouldn't have. Correct that. But 7 million people get the program. To say that 11,000 out of 7 million -- deal with that.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that's Bernie Sanders questioning Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. Robert Reich?
ROBERT REICH: Well, morality is very much at the center of all of this. I mean, this is the discussion we ought to be having. I mean, say what you want about Donald Trump. He has at least brought us back to first principles. Why are we together in this nation? What -- who are we? Are we just a bunch of individuals who happen to be born here and who should be making as much money and accumulating as much power as possible? Is that the meaning of America? Or is it that we are a bunch of white Christians who were all born here and speak English as a first language? Is that the meaning of America? Well, I'm sorry, that is not the meaning of America as we've understood it for much of the 200 years -- more than 200 years of our existence. There are ideals that undergird our understanding of why we are a nation. As a great political philosopher Carl Friedrich once said, you know, "To be a Frenchman is a fact. To be an American is an ideal." You know, we are not a creed. We are not a religion. We are a conviction, a conviction about the importance of certain ideals.
Donald Trump obviously doesn't understand the common good. He's never uttered the words "the common good," I'm sure. But they were understood. You know, I'm old enough to remember people like Robert F. Kennedy, who talked in terms of the common good. I even worked -- my first job in government was working for Robert F. Kennedy in his Senate office in 1967. And I, like many of my generation, went out and campaigned for Eugene McCarthy 50 years ago, because we believed so deeply that there was a common good that was being violated by the Vietnam War. Many of us sacrificed our time. And some of my -- a friend of mine, very good friend, sacrificed his life in the civil rights movement. Most of us, many of us, were weaned on the notion that this country had moral principles. When Bernie Sanders asks Mick Mulvaney about morality, he is asking a question about what this country once represented and should represent.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, in your book, when you're talking about what are some of the shifts that have begun to tear away at the concept of the common good, you talk about the notion of whatever it takes to win. Can you talk about that?
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