In Dark of Night Senate Republicans Pass Tax Cuts for the Wealthy Bill Loaded With Pork and Perks

ObamaCare and Medicare Will Suffer

Just before 2 AM in Washington, D.C. Senate Republicans successfully rammed through a bill that will ultimately raise taxes on low-income and moderate-income Americans while delivering long-term tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations. The final vote was 51-49. No Democrat voted for the nearly 500-pages of legislation that not a single Senator read, as they literally voted to not allow time to read the bill before voting. All but one Republican, Sen. Bob Corker, voted for the bill.

The legislation will go to conference, where aides will hammer out differences with the House version. Both the House and the Senate will have to vote again on the final bill, but there’s little chance of it not passing through Congress. President Donald Trump is hoping to sign it intro law before Christmas.

Democrats eked out one win: Republican Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania tried to give a tax cut to a single institution, Hillsdale college in Michigan. A conservative Christian college that happens to have major ties to the family of Betsy DeVos, Hillsdale “considers itself a trustee of our Western philosophical and theological inheritance.” The Education Secretary and her brother, Erik Prince, are graduates of the school. Prince, the founder of the Blackwater security services company, sits on its board.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer “called the Hillsdale exemption a ‘metaphor’ for the Republican tax plan,” The Guardian noted.

“A single wealthy college, the pet project of a billionaire campaign contributor to the Republican party exempted by a [senator] who fought to get rid of earmarks,” Schumer said. “This unfortunately is the metaphor for this bill and how high the stench is rising in this chamber as we debate the bill tonight.”

But Republicans were able to hand their donors a wide array of special gifts, including eliminating a tax on cruise ships that stop in Alaska, and opening the protected Alaska Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. The inclusion of the provision was the only way to get Alaska GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski’s vote on the bill. 

The news actually gets worse.

The bill adds at least $1 trillion to the deficit, and repeals the Obamacare individual mandate. 13 million will lose health care coverage under this bill.

“Of the many losers in the tax bill are teachers who will no longer be able to deduct the money they spend out of pocket for their students’ school supplies. And graduate students will see a massive tax increase as a result of a provision to treat their tuition waivers as ordinary income,” an opinion piece in Forbes notes.

“Put simply, this is a direct redistribution of wealth from ordinary Americans to the ultra-wealthy. The non-partisan Tax Policy Center calculated the Trump tax cuts will award 62% of the overall benefit to the top 1% of households. This isn’t just bad economics—it’s morally reprehensible,” the Forbes piece adds.

As an example, it points out that private jet leasing companies, which are actually subsidized by commercial airline flyers – you and me – will benefit from an expansion of this tax subsidy that has been woven into the GOP bill.

Bottom line, the Republican Party has officially exposed themselves as the guardians of the super-rich, the destroyers of the middle class, beholden only to their wealthy donors.

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Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license

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