Statement | Budget, Taxes, and Public Investment

News from EPI Tax bill is nothing short of wholesale looting

The GOP tax bill represents nothing short of wholesale looting by the Republican Party, on behalf of the wealthiest Americans and large corporations.

Despite claims that it will trickle down to working people, there is no evidence that corporations will do anything with the money they save in taxes other than reward shareholders with more dividends and executives with higher salaries—a fact that many high-profile CEOs have admitted to. When fully-phased in, the bill will give 83 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent. Incredibly, it raises taxes on half of working families. To add further injury, the bill kneecaps the Affordable Care Act by eliminating the individual mandate—destabilizing health insurance markets, raising health insurance premiums, and leaving 13 million people without health insurance.

While it won’t spur wage growth or boost corporate investment, provide meaningful benefits to working families, simplify the tax code, or make it easier for people to file their taxes, what this bill will do is increase the deficit by as much as $2.2 trillion simply to finance more money in the pockets of the richest American households and corporations. Congressional Republicans have already signaled that in 2018 they will go after Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security as well, likely exploiting fears about the deficits they just worsened. We owe it to the most vulnerable among us to fight those coming attacks tooth and nail.

From the way it was conceived and sold to the public, to the rushed, haphazard manner in which it made its way through Congress, this bill has never been anything more than a scam.


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