GOP tax bill is the biggest tax cut for the wealthy ever done through tax legislation in any country at any time in history
The
Republicans are gathering on Capitol Hill to celebrate their great
victory of robbing the middle class to enrich the ultra-wealthy
through a legislation that will also screw up healthcare for tens of
millions of Americans
Aaron
Maté of the Real
News spoke with Bill Black, Associate Professor of
Economics and Law at the University of Missouri, about the biggest
robbery against the US middle class in history, made by the
Republicans and the Trump administration, to satisfy the plutocrats.
The GOP
tax bill is propagated through the common, now obsolete, but biggest
fairy tale that the neoliberal regime has sold to the working class:
Trickle-down economics.
Key
points by Black:
It is
the biggest [tax cut for the wealthy] ever done through tax
legislation in any country at any time in history. And it comes at a
time when the United States already has record income inequality,
record profits for corporations and record wealth for the top 1,000
of 100% in the world. The bill is absolutely indefensible on any of
the grounds claimed and therefore, essentially all of the major
claims for it have been outright lies. Of which we should highlight,
Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, one of the asserted adults, by the way,
who is supposed to protect us from President Trump under some fairy
tales.
Mnuchin
said that there were good studies, study after study, that showed
this bill was actually going to make money. By reducing taxes, we
would actually increase tax revenue because we would spur economic
growth. And then he doubled down on it and said that there were over
100 people at treasury working on those analyses. Well, of course,
that was a complete lie. There was no one working on the analyses.
There are no analyses that could attempt to show that.
US
companies have trillions of dollars and they don't want it to be
officially located in the United States because then they'd have to
pay taxes on it so they keep it offshore. Now, the Republican logic
of all of this is we'll have a really low rate to bring them tax
money back in. We'll have more tax money and there'll be much more
investment. The last part doesn't work at all and it doesn't because
the money isn't actually sitting in the Cayman Islands because what
would the Cayman Islands do with it? It wouldn't pay you interest and
such. It's actually brought into places like New York banking system,
in truth.
So, it's
not going to spur the economy but what it does mean is those
companies that did those special scam deals with places like the
offshore islands and Ireland, they are going to get a super low tax
for bringing the money back, having scammed it first. So, scamming
wins. You don't even get the reduced tax rate under the statute that
you were talking about. You get an extra special low tax rate to
reward for being the kind of folks who spend all your money avoiding
taxes.
The
Republicans have also allowed to expire one of the programs that you
would've thought would be absolutely, no one would go after. This is
the Child Health Insurance Program, CHIP, which covers eight million
American poor kids and they've allowed this to lapse. And what the
Republicans are signaling is that they're going to use the excuse
that there's no more money because of their tax cuts to have full
Medicare and Medicaid and such. And that therefore, because of their
giveaways to the wealthy, they have to slash healthcare protections
for the poor, including the poorest kids.
The tax
cuts for the wealthy are permanent. The tax cuts for the middle class
are temporary and they're front loaded so that it looks like you're
getting a reduction in your taxes if you're middle class. Most middle
class folks in the early years will have small reductions. But that
will reverse and most middle class folks will actually end up with
higher taxes under this bill. So, it's a redistribution bill that
takes mostly from the middle class, certainly from the working class
as well and redistributes to the absolute wealthiest Americans.
The last
poll I've shown showed that only 8% of Americans believed the
Republicans that this was a tax bill primarily for the middle class.
In other words, the Republicans have taken something, a massive tax
cut, which intrinsically should be immensely popular with the
population, and turned it into something that in the polls is one of
the least popular things the Republicans are doing. And the
Republicans, as we speak, are gathering on Capitol Hill to celebrate
their great victory of robbing the middle class to enrich the
ultra-wealthy through a legislation that will also screw up
healthcare for tens of millions of Americans. And they think that is
the best thing they've done during Trump's entire term.
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