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cost of living
This Tax Season Proved 'No Tax on Tips' Was Never for Workers
Cutting taxes on some tips for some workers is not a solution. Raising wages—and ending the subminimum wage—is.
Apr 18, 2026
During the election, Donald Trump boasted about lowering taxes for working Americans with his “no tax on tips” plan. This tax season, millions of Americans found out it was a scam.
You have to earn money for tax cuts to affect you. A tax deduction only helps if you owe taxes—and most tipped workers earn so little that they barely do. Two-thirds of tipped workers will not even earn enough to benefit. Zero minus zero is still zero. The vast majority of these tax cuts go to the wealthiest taxpayers.
For the workers this policy was supposed to help, the results are already clear.
Take Sherie Cummings, who has poured drinks on the Las Vegas Strip for 20 years. Sherie and her husband, also a bartender, earned $60,000 in tips last year. They expected the full deduction the president promised. They got $25,000 of it. The cap.
Thirteen million tipped workers do not need a tax deduction. They need a raise.
For private jet buyers, the same law delivered something different. Full write-offs on aircraft worth $5 to $10 million. And that write-off is permanent. The tips deduction expires in 2028. The Tax Policy Center projects that 60% of the savings from this law will flow to the top fifth of households—those earning more than $217,000 a year. The wealthiest will save millions. Sherie Cummings is putting her refund into savings because she is afraid of what comes next.
For working people, the real problem was never the tax code. It is wages. The federal subminimum wage for tipped workers has been $2.13 an hour since 1991. It was locked there permanently in 1996 by the National Restaurant Association—what we call “the other NRA.” They spent $2.9 million on federal lobbying in 2020 alone to make sure it stayed there. Which is why tipped workers earn a median income of $15,198 a year. Thirty-seven percent of the national median. Which is why they rely on food stamps at nearly double the rate of other workers. And because workers depend on tips from customers to survive, they put up with what no one should have to. Seventy-one percent of women in the industry report sexual harassment. In subminimum wage states, the rate is double what it is in states that require a full minimum wage with tips on top.
Seven states already require a full minimum wage with tips on top: California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Minnesota, Montana, Alaska. It is called One Fair Wage. The restaurant lobby warns that tips would disappear, that restaurants would close, that jobs would vanish. These are scare tactics. The seven states prove them wrong. Tips are the same or higher. Restaurant employment grows faster. Small business growth rates match or beat subminimum wage states.
And restaurant workers have organized and fought for years and won One Fair Wage in Washington, DC, Chicago, and Michigan. The restaurant lobby has fought to block and roll back these wins—in Michigan, they are still trying. But workers keep going. And even where implementation is partial, the numbers are in. DC set an all-time restaurant employment record. Tips grew. Chicago saw more than 850 new restaurant licenses and the fastest pay growth in the country.
Cutting taxes on some tips for some workers is not a solution. Raising wages—and ending the subminimum wage—is. That is why more than 100 labor, community, and civil rights organizations have come together as the Living Wage For All coalition. The fight: Raise the minimum wage to meet the cost of living and end all subminimum wages. In every state. For every worker. Campaigns are active in eight states. Workers have already won. And they will keep winning.
Thirteen million tipped workers do not need a tax deduction. They need a raise. Every shift. Every paycheck. Every year.
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Iran War 'More Important Than Your Pocketbook,' GOP Senator Tells Americans Facing High Gas Prices
"People in the United States are literally skipping meals and the Republican Congress won’t even hold a hearing about this unplanned disastrous war," said one critic.
Apr 14, 2026
A Republican senator on Tuesday tried to sell wary Americans on President Donald Trump's war with Iran by telling them that national security is more important than any financial pain they're feeling in the form of higher energy costs.
During an appearance on Newsmax's "Wake Up America" program, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) tried to assuage Americans' concerns about the spike in gas prices caused by the war by informing viewers that the US is "the leading producer of oil in the world, we're exporting more than we're importing."
Sen. Roger Marshall: "I'm sorry that gas prices are going up, but help is on the way, and your national security is even more important than your pocketbook." pic.twitter.com/GSUEDVHQml
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 14, 2026
The US exporting more of its own oil to foreign countries whose regular supplies have been disrupted by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz does nothing to lower US gas prices and, if anything, will push them higher.
As a Monday Wall Street Journal article explained, "prices at the pump are poised to keep rising if the US exports more oil and gas and drains its inventories," especially since "the jump in exports doesn’t yet correspond to an increase in US oil production."
Later in the segment, Marshall acknowledged that Americans were feeling pain at the gas pump, but he said it was worth it to stop the supposed threat from Iran, which did not attack the US and, according to US intelligence estimates, was not close to producing nuclear weapons.
"I'm sorry that gas prices are going up," he said. "But help is on the way, and your national security, yes, is even more important than your pocketbook."
Marshall's claims about the Iran War being worth the cost came days after Harvard Kennedy School professor Linda Bilmes, an expert in war budgeting, estimated the total cost of the conflict would top $1 trillion.
Criminal defense attorney Sara Spector pounced on Marshall's comments as symbolic of Republicans' tone deafness to Americans' economic concerns.
"Octogenarians are door dashing to pay for medical bills," she remarked, "and Senator Marshall wants you to pay for a war while Donald Trump golfs and attends VIP sporting events. Wow!"
Fred Wellman, a Democratic candidate for the US House of Representatives in Missouri, noted that the GOP-run Congress isn't even having hearings where elected representatives can ask Trump administration officials about the war.
"People in the United States are literally skipping meals and the Republican Congress won’t even hold a hearing about this unplanned disastrous war," Wellman wrote. "No, we won’t accept anymore assurances or urges to sacrifice for the greater good when the leaders won’t even respect us enough to go under oath and tell us why."
Jennifer Schulze, a former local TV news executive, pointed out that the claims about the Iran War being essential to US security were totally false.
"Iran was not: 1.) close to having a nuclear weapon; 2.) Posing an imminent threat to the US," she wrote.
Jon Bauman, president of Social Security Works PAC, said Marshall's claim that high gas prices are worth the cost of launching an unprovoked war with Iran was a "losing argument."
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While Cost of Living Soars and Healthcare Taken Away, Trump Spending $1 Billion Per Day in War of Choice With Iran
"We can't afford to keep our hospitals open, but we can afford a billion dollars a day to bomb Iran?"
Mar 05, 2026
With fresh reporting that the ongoing US assault on Iran could be costing $1 billion per day in taxpayer money, opposition lawmakers, candidates for office, and outside critics are ripping the Trump administration and his allies in Congress for the financial recklessness of the unlawful and unprovoked attack on the Iranian people.
"We can't afford to keep our hospitals open, but we can afford a billion dollars a day to bomb Iran?" asked Graham Platner, a Democrat running to unseat Republican Sen. Susan Collin of Maine in this year's midterm elections, in a social media post Wednesday.
Hundreds of hospitals across the US, most of them in rural areas, are teetering on the brink of bankruptcy or closure in the wake of Trump's signing of a spending and tax giveaway bill last year that gave billions in tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy while slashing healthcare, including Medicaid.
Collins on Wednesday joined all but one member of the Republican caucus in the US Senate to vote down a War Powers Resolution that would have compelled Trump to cease military operations against Iran.
"In one fucking month we will spend more over there than we needed to save healthcare for more than 2 million Americans. They literally are taking away your food and your healthcare for this regime change war of choice." —Sen. Brian Schatz
Planter was responding to journalist Nancy Youssef of The Atlantic, who reported, citing a congressional official, that a "preliminary Pentagon cost estimate of the war in Iran is $1 billion a day."
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) expressed similar outrage to the figure.
"This war is costing a billion dollars a day," said Schatz. "In one fucking month we will spend more over there than we needed to save healthcare for more than 2 million Americans. They literally are taking away your food and your healthcare for this regime change war of choice."
An analysis by Allison McManus at the Center for American Progress published Tuesday estimates that the US costs since bombing raids were launched by the American and Israeli forces over the weekend easily exceed $5 billion. According to McManus:
In a March 2 press conference, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine provided a glimpse into the nature of operations thus far in Operation Epic Fury. Caine described the deployment of more than 100 aircraft, the use of Tomahawk missiles, and attacks on more than 1,000 targets in just the first day of operations. Utilizing Brown University’s “Costs of War” project cost estimates of previous operations in the region—including Operation Midnight Hammer against Iran last June and engaging the Houthis in Yemen—it is likely that the operations Caine described alone would cost more than $4 billion.
But these are not the only costs. Elaine McCusker, a former Pentagon official in the first Trump administration, estimated the costs of repositioning forces in the Middle East to be around $630 million even prior to the start of hostilities. On March 2, Kuwaiti forces accidentally shot down three F-15 fighter jets in a friendly-fire incident. As these aircraft can cost as much as $117 million, this translates to an estimated total loss of $351 million. Added to the operations Caine described, a conservative estimate for the initial costs of Operation Epic Fury is more than $5 billion as of March 2—and the campaign is just getting started.
McManus further notes that the billions in military spending for a war that polls show a large majority in the US oppose, "come at a time when American citizens are acutely feeling the pressures of increased prices at home, including housing, energy, and health care costs."
As independent journalist Zaid Jilani noted, "Trump is spending a billion dollars a day killing people abroad while cutting Medicaid and health care for Americans."
"Waging a senseless and costly war raises legitimate questions about this government’s priorities," argues McManus in her analysis. "Priced at around $2.2 million, a single Tomahawk missile could cover 775 children on Medicaid for a year or provide more than 3,600 children with meals in the National School Lunch Program. At more than $5 billion and counting, the costs of Operation Epic Fury—in only its first few days of operations—could cover Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for more than 2 million Americans for a year. If this war continues at the same pace, Americans could see their government burn through tens of billions of dollars, funds that would amount to the cost of Medicaid for millions in the United States."
John Collins, political writer based in Boston, was contemplative about the military expenditures. "Just thinking of what we could do with a billion dollars a day that doesn’t include bombing people," Collins said.
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