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This Tax Bill Is a Trillion-Dollar Blunder
Congress and President Trump put politics ahead of smart reform.....
The GOP tax 'reform' package will do significant long-term harm to most Americans and their descendants. It will not pay for itself, instead increasing an already massive deficit. Many Americans [rightfully] believe that funding sorely needed infrastructure repair and replacement should have been the initial Congressional bipartisan endeavor. The GOP however, is ramming through a horrible tax package first for a specific reason. After passage, the GOP will then disingenuously bemoan the fact that the deficit is increasing [an unavoidable consequence of their tax legislation] and demand deep cuts in America's safety-net programs -- Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. While the rich get wealthier, everyone else gets the dregs with emaciated safety-net programs when the economy bottoms out from the deep recession that the GOP 'revenue-negative' tax legislation virtually guarantees. There is an underlying rationale why the Republican House/Senate leadership changes their reconciliation tax package on a daily basis. They do not want their legislation scored [by the CBO and independent economic analysis] before a quick floor vote. They do not want to provide the public/media any checks and balance. Such a tactic speaks volumes of the lengths the GOP will travel to pass their pro-wealth agenda in this specific order.
Related: Republicans Despise the Working Class - The New York Times
Congress and President Trump put politics ahead of smart reform.....
By Michael R. Bloomberg
Bloomberg
December 15, 2017
Last month a Wall Street Journal editor asked a room full of CEOs to raise their hands if the corporate tax cut being considered in Congress would lead them to invest more. Very few hands went up. Attending was Gary Cohn, President Donald Trump's economic adviser and a friend of mine. He asked: "Why aren't the other hands up?" Allow me to answer that: We don't need the money. Corporations are sitting on a record amount of cash reserves: nearly $2.3 trillion. The Treasury Department claimed to have more than 100 professional staffers "working around the clock" to analyze the tax cut. If true, their hard work must have been suppressed. The flimsy one-page analysis Treasury released -- which accepts the White House's reality-defying economic projections in order to claim that the tax cuts will pay for themselves and then some -- is a politically driven document that amounts to economic malpractice. So does the bill itself.
The largest economic challenges we face include a skills crisis that our public schools are not addressing, crumbling infrastructure that imperils our global competitiveness, wage stagnation coupled with growing wealth inequality, and rising deficits that will worsen as more baby boomers retire. The tax bill does nothing to address these challenges. In fact, it makes each of them worse. To what end? To hand corporations big tax cuts they don't need, while lowering the tax rate paid by those of us in the top bracket, and allowing the wealthy to shelter more of their estates. To be clear: I'm in favor of reducing the 35 percent corporate tax rate as part of a revenue-neutral tax reform effort. Right now, the corporate code is so convoluted, and rates so high relative to other nations (thereby creating an incentive to keep profits offshore), that the real rates companies pay can be wildly divergent. This is neither fair nor efficient. Republicans in Congress will have to take responsibility for the bill's harmful effects, but blame also falls on its cheerleader-in-chief, President Trump. A president's job is to get the two parties in Congress to work together. Yet Trump is making the same mistake that Barack Obama made in his first two years in office -- believing that his party's congressional majority gives him license to govern without the other side. The tax bill is an economically indefensible blunder that will harm our future. The Republicans in Congress who must surely know it -- and who have bucked party leaders before -- should vote no.
The GOP tax 'reform' package will do significant long-term harm to most Americans and their descendants. It will not pay for itself, instead increasing an already massive deficit. Many Americans [rightfully] believe that funding sorely needed infrastructure repair and replacement should have been the initial Congressional bipartisan endeavor. The GOP however, is ramming through a horrible tax package first for a specific reason. After passage, the GOP will then disingenuously bemoan the fact that the deficit is increasing [an unavoidable consequence of their tax legislation] and demand deep cuts in America's safety-net programs -- Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. While the rich get wealthier, everyone else gets the dregs with emaciated safety-net programs when the economy bottoms out from the deep recession that the GOP 'revenue-negative' tax legislation virtually guarantees. There is an underlying rationale why the Republican House/Senate leadership changes their reconciliation tax package on a daily basis. They do not want their legislation scored [by the CBO and independent economic analysis] before a quick floor vote. They do not want to provide the public/media any checks and balance. Such a tactic speaks volumes of the lengths the GOP will travel to pass their pro-wealth agenda in this specific order.
Related: Republicans Despise the Working Class - The New York Times