Scott Bessent is an Out Of Touch Billionaire Whose Policies Will Harm Americans

Scott Bessent, a billionaire hedge fund manager, has been nominated to serve as Secretary of the U.S. Treasury. Bessent, who donated nearly $3 million to Trump and other Republicans during the last election cycle and defended Trump’s tariff plan, which analysts found would increase prices for consumers and leave the average American family paying nearly $4,000 more every year. His harmful policy proposals include advocating for a freeze in discretionary spending except for defense spending, which would threaten programs such as veteran’s health care and benefits, and risky financial deregulation that could put American consumers at risk.

Fight for More Tax Giveaways to the Wealthy While Leaving Working Americans Behind

Bessent has been on the record fully defending the flawed 2017 Trump Tax Giveaways to corporations and the wealthiest Americans. This new round of tax giveaways for the rich will cost trillions at the expense of working families, similar to the 2017 law, which primarily benefited wealthy households and large corporations and failed to deliver the promised benefits for working families. 

The Trump tax law primarily benefited wealthy households and large corporations and failed to deliver promised benefits for working families: The top 1% saw an increase in after-tax incomes nearly three times the size of households in the bottom 60%. The Trump tax cuts cost this country trillions of dollars: $2 trillion by 2027 and $4.6 trillion over 10 years if the law is extended next year.

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that extending the tax scam would add $4.6 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. Several of the expiring provisions, including the pass-through deduction, largely benefited the wealthy, with the Joint Committee on Taxation finding over half of the deduction’s benefits went to households with over $1 million in income in 2024. Furthermore, a National Bureau of Economic Research report found “no evidence of large changes in investment, wages to non-owners, or hiring of non-owners” due to this deduction.

Rather than use windfalls from the 2017 tax giveaways to spend on workers, evidence suggests large corporations increased stock buybacks, expected to exceed $1 trillion in 2025 for the first time. Furthermore, 2020 testimony from Jason Furman, the former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, highlighted that business investment growth was actually slower in the two years following the tax scam’s enactment compared to the two years before. And when excluding the 2020 pandemic-induced slowdown, stock buybacks have significantly increased yearly since the law was passed in 2017. 

Inflationary Tariffs

Bessent has defended President Trump’s proposed tariffs, which multiple economists have opposed, with 16 Nobel Prize-winning economists notably warning that President Trump’s agenda would “reignite” inflation. Additional studies have also suggested that the economic burden and cost of tariffs levied during the first Trump administration ultimately fell to the American consumer, not foreign exporters. The new tariff policies supported by Bessent would essentially make groceries and household goods more expensive for American families, explicitly undercutting a Trump campaign promise to lower costs for the American people.