Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has finally admitted that he “misspoke” when he claimed that no one in the middle class would see a tax increase under the tax plan just released yesterday by Senate Republicans. McConnell told The New York Times:
“I misspoke on that. You can’t guarantee that absolutely no one sees a tax increase.”
“What we are doing is targeting levels of income and looking at the average in those levels and the average will be tax relief for the average taxpayer in each of those segments,” he added.
McConnell has previously claimed in an interview on MSNBC that “at the end of the day, nobody in the middle class is going to get a tax increase.” While the Senate tax bill is said by analysts to be more favorable to the middle class than the House version, The New York Times preliminary dissection of the bill figures that a quarter of middle-class families would see an average tax increase of $1,000 in 2018, with the numbers rising to a third of the middle class getting an increase of an average of $1,600 by 2026.
The Republican Senate tax proposal would drastically reduce the corporate tax rate and relies heavily on the discredited theory of trickle-down economics to provide a supposed boost to the economy that will benefit the entire populace.
In truth, as the recent information revealed in the “Paradise Papers” leaked from a law firm specializing in tax avoidance schemes for wealthy corporations and individuals shows, these folks have been cheating the nation by hiding income and stashing their ill-gotten profits overseas where they don’t do anything to stimulate the U.S. economy, except perhaps for yacht builders and luxury goods manufacturers.
According to Lily Batchelder, a professor and tax specialist at New York University Law School, who worked on economic policy in the Obama administration, under the Senate tax bill:
“Americans are especially likely to face a tax increase if they have a smaller family, have mostly wage income instead of investment income, or claim some of the many deductions that the bill repeals, like those for state and local taxes and employee business expenses. They are increasing taxes on many in the middle class, while concentrating their tax cuts on the wealthy.”
With the Senate tax plan eliminating deductions for State and local taxes, the tax burden would now fall disproportionately on people in states with high taxes and extensive government services, or, in other words, states with predominantly Democratic voters.
While it’s refreshing to see the Senate Majority Leader own up to his previous misstatements, it doesn’t make the bill he’s trying to pass any better or more equitable. It’s still another giveaway to the wealthy corporate donors who have reportedly threatened to withhold campaign donations if the Republicans don’t pass a tax cut that makes them happy. Just another reason why we need a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United ruling from the Supreme Court and get corporate money out of politics.
