Two new reports, one non-partisan, one conservative-leaning, just revealed that the Republican tax scam, set to pass both houses by the end of this year, could balloon the debt much more than previously thought. Prior reports from the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Taxation Committee had suggested the tax bill — pushed by the party formerly known for “fiscal conservatism” — would cost American taxpayers a whopping $1.5 trillion. However these new reports make that staggering price tag look like child’s play.
The nonpartisan deficit watchdog group Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has determined that if cuts to individual tax rates are allowed to extend for ten years, the debt could rise by as much as $2.2. trillion. Meanwhile, the conservative Tax Foundation said the bill could make the debt go up by $2.7 trillion.
JUST IN: GOP tax bill could cost $2.2 trillion: study https://t.co/b0bfw99FYH pic.twitter.com/iLqMa1OAGa
— The Hill (@thehill) December 18, 2017
Republicans argue that with “dynamic-scoring” — which factors in the growth they say the tax bill will generate — the debt, which is already close to $20 trillion, would “only” go up by $1.4 trillion. Cutting taxes for the rich and corporations and hoping on a wing and a prayer that it will create jobs for middle- and working-class Americans is known as “trickle-down economics,” a Reagan-era theory that has long since been disproven by all self-respecting economists.
Not only does the tax bill permanently lower taxes for the 1% and major corporations while making average Americans foot the bill, it could spiral our already-out-of-control national debt beyond the breaking point.
According to today’s The Hill:
“If expiring provisions are extended and late-stage tax hikes avoided, debt could reach as high as 98 percent or 100 percent of GDP by 2027,” [the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget] group said. “In other words, the national debt could exceed the size of the economy.”
In fact, the national debt is already greater than our GDP, but the Federal Reserve monetizes that debt. However, the higher our debt-to-GDP ration climbs, the likelier we are to find ourselves in a recession, perhaps even worse than the devastating one from which we have just emerged.
In other words, the savings from the proposed tax cuts go into the pockets of our wealthiest citizens, while the children and grandchildren of the 99% will have to shoulder the fiscal burden long into the future.
Republicans are not even trying to hide the class warfare they are waging on working Americans. Offering private jet and inheritance deductions to the wealthy, while shortchanging the child tax credit, throwing 13 million people of healthcare, effectively repealing Obamacare, and abolishing deductions for teachers who have to buy their own school supplies, they are literally redistributing already-disparate American wealth from regular folks to the richest families in the country.
Meanwhile, they are hypocritically defying the principle conservatives say is most important to them — reducing the national debt.
The dramatic news about the price tag of their tax scam should stop the bill in its tracks. However, Republicans have enough votes lined up that it will probably pass.
Either way, we must march to the polls en masse in 2018 and 2020 to demand our money back.
