Senator Ted Cruz Is Wrong About Corporate Tax Cuts, Wages, and Jobs

During his closing statement at Friday night's U.S. Senate debate with Democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) noted that in November there will be "a lot of things on the ballot" including jobs and paychecks. He bragged that two Texas-based corporations, AT&T and American Airlines, had given one-time bonuses after the corporate tax cut bill passed and claimed that cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthiest Americans has led to an increase in jobs.

Senator Cruz needs to stop listening to AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson and American Airlines CEO Doug Parker and start listening to Texans who work at AT&T and American.

"It's nice to have a bonus check," said Esther Bishop, who was laid off from AT&T. "But a bonus doesn't go very far if you don't have a job. Senator Cruz needs to tell the rest of the story – that right after they handed out those bonuses, AT&T laid off hundreds of employees, right before Christmas in Texas and across the whole country. I was one of those employees who lost their jobs during that time."

Stephenson pledged that if the Republican tax bill passed, the company would spend at least $1 billion in capital expenditures and be able to create "7,000 good jobs for the middle class." Instead, despite $20 billion in tax savings, the company has eliminated more than 7,000 jobs since January 2018 when the tax cuts took effect.

"Senator Cruz should tell the truth about who that tax cut helped," said Michael Oliva, a passenger service agent at American Airlines subsidiary Envoy Air in Lubbock. "American Airlines is using that money to buy back their own stock to make their executives and big shareholders richer, not to raise our wages."