Making Enemies Who Will Not Forget

The subtext of the current 100% GOP tax plan is to empower the rich under the completely disproven mantra that if rewarded with these massive tax cuts the rich will shower the country with new, high-paying jobs. All this while forcing both state and federal governments to reduce, dismantle or destroy support for social programs – from Medicare, Medicaid, Affordable Care Act or state equivalents should any state want to protect its own residents – and federal administrative agencies that are designed to protect ordinary Americans from massive corporate power. It gets worse: the federal corporate tax rates would be permanent, but the individual tax cuts would expire on their own. This is income redistribution on steroids, pushing income inequality to new levels of unfairness. The rich get so much richer.

How can the feds stop states from passing or continuing their own social programs? After all, under the 10th Amendment, states have precisely reserved that power to themselves. Easy. If individual taxpayers in those states with the largest urban populations (where social programs are really needed), most of which are blue, cannot deduct state against federal income tax (as they can now while big corporations will still be entitled to deduct those taxes under the new law), the new combined state and federal individual income tax burden will be so pronounced that voters are likely to press for lower state spending to reduce those soon-to-be-nondeductible state income taxes. And that grassroots push is most likely to be evidenced by cutbacks in state social programs.

If those blue states – like California, New York, New Jersey, etc. – do not reduce that tax burden, businesses will lose high-profile employees to lower tax states, and the overall impact on local economies, from reduced net income to lower housing sales (the latter further accelerated by a proposed cap on deductible property taxes), will ripple through every segment of the local economy. It’s not exactly an accidental consequence of the GOP tax plan; it is punishment against those states where Republicans have little or no clout with the voters.

Meanwhile, the legislation is tripping all over itself with little “gifts” to ultra-right wing constituents, particularly evangelical fundamentalists. For example, the prohibition against religious organizations (who would have otherwise lost their tax exempt status) from getting directly involved in political campaigns (“if you vote for a Democrat, you will face damnation for all eternity”) is being repealed in the fine print of the proposed bill.

Supported by negative numbers from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, some Republicans want a mechanism to undo some of the proposed elements if, as is incredibly likely, the “tax reform act” does not deliver the promised overall economic uplift. “One key change sought by [Bob Corker (R-Tennessee)] and other senators — inserting a trigger mechanism to roll back the tax breaks if economic growth doesn’t cover costs as promised — was met with strong opposition from big business and conservatives, including a group backed by the influential Koch brothers that has been running digital ads and robocalls targeting wavering senators on tax cuts.

“Instead, GOP senators began floating an alternative trigger mechanism that would impose automatic spending cuts to prevent deficits. But that idea also ran into resistance from some lawmakers… ‘The trigger has been a moving target,’ said Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, who said she had agreed to vote to open debate but was not yet supportive of the tax plan…Collins won a commitment from McConnell to address healthcare fixes to prevent insurance premium increases if the tax bill includes a repeal of the Affordable Care Act requirement that all Americans have health insurance…

“Experts say the approach provides more benefit to big businesses and wealthy individuals than average Americans… Studies show that while most Americans, on average, would see tax cuts, some taxpayers — especially lower- and middle-income filers — would see tax hikes, especially once the reduced rates expire… The package will add $1.5 trillion to the deficit, and some senators complain there has not been enough analysis to see if economic growth will cover those costs as Republicans argue.” Los Angeles Times, November 30th.

Even as every GOP Congress-person knows this tax act is deeply flawed, even though no such massive reform has passed without bipartisan support (nonexistent here), the GOP rush to pass “something big” while the 51 vote rule remains in effect and prior to the 2018 midterms is so great that the bill is close to passage in the Senate, after which it would go to the House for “reconciliation” with the House version passed earlier. The GOP leadership is inserting provisions that are concessions to individual members of Congress (Collins got a tiny increase in teachers’ ability to deduct the cost of school supplies, for example) just to get one vote. For deficit hawks, the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has pledged further cuts to those social programs (which include Medicare and Social Security).

The hero who saved repeal of the Affordable Care Act, whom many believed would save the day again – Arizona Republican Senator John McCain – apparently could no longer face the deluge of conservatives pressing for this massive corporate give-away. On November 29th, McCain finally committed to the bill: “I believe this legislation, though far from perfect, would enhance American competitiveness, boost the economy, and provide long overdue tax relief for middle class families.”

But as I pointed out in my November 29th The Deep Dark Republican Hole blog, this 51-vote rule is an anomaly that will not survive into the next Congress or even the next presidency… unless the Senate in the future is able to mount a repeal and reform effort with an impossible-to-reach 60 vote majority. We may be stuck with one of most destructive pieces of tax legislation in American history for a very long time. Will it really pass? We'll know soon.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the United States has become a model to the world for how voter restrictions and manipulation can preserve incumbent power and distort the democratic process.