Day 315: GOP Could Change Economy For Decades Within 36 Hours
This despite the lack of any real picture of how their tax bill affects the economic landscape.
The Senate is rapidly moving ahead with a tax bill — well, what was initially a tax bill — that could be passed as soon as Friday.
The bill could upend the economics of the nation, and it’s being pushed through at breakneck speed without regard for regular order anyway.
Generally, the bill seeks to slash corporate tax rates and lower the top tax bracket for the upper class. Overall, corporations will see higher profits, which they have said over and over again that they will pass on to their shareholders as dividends or use to buyback shares themselves. Virtually no one is promising job creation and this is yet another attempt at trickle down economics.
While as many as 60 percent of Americans may see initial tax cuts, the lower and middle classes will actually see tax hikes or mere pennies compared to the top one percent, where the vast majority of benefits will flow. Over time, more and more people in the lower and middle classes see tax increases, as can be clearly seen by the PBS chart outlining the data from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. The data clearly delineates who benefits and who doesn’t over time.
On top of this, the GOP has gotten greedy, and the “tax bill” includes everything from a repeal of the Affordable Care Act purchase mandate to lifting the ban on political activism by religious institutions. The House’s version of the bill even includes giving new rights to fetuses.
Amazingly, the once ‘we must do everything possible to slash the federal deficit’ Republicans are eager to add what the CBO claims will be $1.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade. That means the United States will be borrowing money from China to fund tax breaks for corporations and wealthy individuals as the economy thrives.
Unsurprisingly, every Democrat will vote against the bill, which means unless three Republicans oppose it, the bill will pass and the House and Senate will conference on their bills and work out any differences before putting a final bill on the floor of each chamber that is guaranteed to pass.
To date, there isn’t a single Republican that has come out against the present version of the bill. While a few are still on the fence, many have agreed to vote for the bill in light of last minute, backroom deals.
The fact that Republicans don’t know what’s in the bill or how it will affect the country for the next decade-plus is largely irrelevant to them. Desperate for any sort of win before the midterm elections and to appease their deep-pocketed donors — as Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has already admitted — the GOP wants to pass anything. And, unlike the wildly unpopular efforts to try to repeal and replace the ACA, this bill is couched as tax cuts for everyone, when, of course, that’s not true.
Donald Trump, despite proclaiming that the bill does him and his family no favors, is blatantly lying. He and his family will benefit in a number of ways, including the repeal of the estate tax, the Alternative Minimum Tax and changes as to how “pass-through” entities are taxed. He has promised, in a rare moment of truth, that he will sign literally anything put on his desk.
The next day and a half could alter the economics of the United States for decades to come.
315 days in, 1147 to go
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