By Saumya Narechania, National Issues Campaign Manager, Organizing for Action
Yesterday’s tax scam will go down as one of the most shameful acts in Senate history.
In a single bill — finalized Friday night (Dec 1, 2017) in scribbled handwriting, and passed in the early Saturday morning hours — Mitch McConnell and 50 other senators voted to:
- Push 13 million Americans off health care.
- Ultimately raise taxes on 87 million middle-class families.
- Punish homeowners, college students, and graduates.
- Add a trillion dollars to our deficit.
All in the name of massive tax breaks for billionaires and corporations.
It’s a bill that was never — not for a second — presented honestly to the American people, and its stain won’t soon go away.
We’ll fight this bill as it goes to conference. We’ll make sure every House member knows he or she should think long and hard before rubber-stamping this calamity.
We’ll let every Senator who voted “yes” know that we deserve better than this bill, this process, and this vote.
And we will keep working, over the next few months, on the fights that determine the future of our country. Let’s channel our anger!
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John Tepper Marlin writes this about the THE TAX BILL based also on reporting from Dana Chasin:
- there is a looming Dec. 8th deadline: by then the house must accept the Senate’s changes
- The Senate grants owners of pass-throughs a deduction rather than a maximum rate, zeroes out the individual mandate penalty, and retains a panoply of deductions eliminated in the House bill.
- The bill is unpopular. This is possibly the least-popular tax package that the Senate has ever passed. Only 25 percent of voters approve of it.
- Some Republican Senators threatened to break ranks over these issues: Fiscal (Debt) Impact, Small Business Treatment, Property Tax Deductibility, ACA Individual Mandate Repeal
- Reps. Ryan and Brady promised to save the average family of four earning $59,000 a year an estimated $1,182. But this works only for the first year of the plan…These families face tax increases in 2024, paying approximately $450 more by 2027. Furthermore, these hikes are expected to affect families earning less than $30,000 in 2019 and less than $40,000 in 2021.
- That this unpopular tax bill could pass the Senate so quickly is astonishing. However, Americans won’t be filing under the new tax system, if it passes, until April 2019 and most Americans won’t suffer a tax increase until after the 2020 election.
