We need more tax brackets, not less. Someone making $1 million a year pays the same rate as someone paying $250,000- or a small business that is somewhere in between. Nevertheless, the worst experiment in modern state government history- Kansas horrible tax cut plan- is becoming very close to national policy. We’ve seen how terrible it went in Kansas, and of course Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell are about to make it happen for the rest of us. In their simpleton world where tax cuts for the rich and corporations will cause job creation, they argue that just giving more money to rich people will cause them to hire more employees- it will not. The CEOs who were asked all say the same thing- this will be passed on to shareholders and themselves, not to hiring more workers to make a product for whom demand will not rise. Even so, the Republicans will also take an ax to the inheritance tax- ending it for people who have money like Donald Trump. They’ll lower corporate tax rates- which would be a great idea, if anyone actually paid the real corporate tax rate, not the effective one. Worse yet, they’re raising taxes on the poor and middle class- those that could increase demand. The tax bill raises the debt by more than $1 trillion, after years of hearing about how bad deficits are from Republicans. Finally, the bill does not pay for itself- even under the Republican-backed “dynamic scoring” that takes into account their fairy tale beliefs about the effects of tax cuts. The bill is terrible. The bill is a giant giveaway of money for the rich, that leaves us with a huge deficit.
But that’s not the bad part.
The bill will kill the individual mandate portion of the Affordable Care Act, removing any requirement to insure yourself that was created under Obamacare. This change will cause a sizable portion of those insured under the program to drop their coverage. This will throw uncertainty into the insurance market, and cause insurers to raise rates. These rate increases will make health insurance too expensive for millions of those buying individual coverage, and cause millions of people to lose their health insurance. Some 13 million are estimated to lose their health care under this plan.
That’s not the worst part.
This tax bill will also make deep cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, under the cover of deficits, and harm millions of seniors, children, and the poor. Next year alone, Medicare would face a $25 billion cut, and that would continue- automatically- as long as there are deficits in excess of the allowed $1.5 trillion in the next decade. They would be automatic, and no one would even have to raise a finger to do them. The largest beneficiary of these programs are seniors, people who aren’t really in the workforce anymore.
Now we’re getting to the bad part.
Under the guise of reigning in deficits, this bill will probably have automatic cuts triggered, beyond what already exists, to off-set revenue losses from the tax cut. What that means is pretty straight forward- yes, the tax cut will be unevenly distributed to the rich; yes, the tax cut will grow the deficit anyway. Yes, the tax cut bill will cause 13 million less people to have health insurance; Yes, the bill will cause cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, hurting seniors, children, and the poor; And yes, the bill will hamper the government’s ability to do anything. The Republican Congress and Donald Trump will reward their rich cronies, gut the government’s role in health care, slash what services the government can provide, and ultimately deny the revenue to future governments to do anything more. The long-term implications are more for the have’s and less for the have not’s.
This is in line with what Donald Trump has done in his first year.
While we have all derided his incompetency and lack of understanding of his job, his government has done lots of lasting damage. Net neutrality will soon die, changing the face of the internet forever, thanks to his appointment of Ajit Pai and a conservative FCC. He is packing the courts with very young, very inexperienced, very conservative judges, who will have lifetime appointments to the bench. He is not filling key positions in the State Department, and other departments, crippling their effectiveness and changing how they run. His conservative allies are consolidating the television, newspaper, and radio markets under fewer and fewer (conservative) owners. He’s shedding national park land and opening up more of our wild lands to drilling and other environmentally unfriendly things. He’s pulling out of things like the Paris Climate Agreement, which both hampers the human race’s ability to fight climate change, and kills our credibility abroad to work with our allies. He’s putting a Fed Chief in Janet Yellen’s place who will be far more friendly to his views on the economy.
In short, Trump is doing his damage specifically in ways that will take years (if ever) to get out of the holes he is causing. Even if he were impeached tomorrow and replaced by a competent, progressive President (not possible), they wouldn’t even be able to start in on a progressive agenda for the country- they’d have to clean up the mess first.
Laugh as we may- the Trump legacy project is full-speed ahead.
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