....who really does Republican tax reform help in the long run? Answer: primarily people who do not work for hourly wages and people whose income comes more from investment than it does from salary or wages. What’s more, many of the tax cuts for these people do not expire at the end of 10 years, so that for many in those categories, their annual tax savings are far beyond the total annual wages or salary of that typical American family who makes $73,000. Current breaks for people who make their living off investments were maintained and in some cases expanded, such as “carried interest” on investments that is not taxed in the year it’s earned. That’s a break the average working family, especially those with less than $400 set aside, will never see.
.... it is notuniversally accepted that tax reform and tax cuts simply generate higher growth. Look to Kansas for a catastrophic example. And tax reform that did generate higher growth, such as that under President Reagan (as the congressman accurately notes), came following a long bipartisan process. But then Reagan also raised taxes because of concerns about the deficit, which the GOP seems to conveniently forget. Congressman Flores tries to defend the tax-bill legislative process in November and December. Yet only Republicans insist this was not a rush job. And the House and Senate committees that crafted the bill did so in a process that was anything but bipartisan. In fact, the mystery and secrecy led to votes before many said they had a chance to read the whole bill, much less hold hearings on it. Consider Republican Sen. Bob Corker’s late vote switch and his supposedly learning still later last-minute additions meant real-estate investors such as him would get even bigger breaks: “I had not read it.”...
Congressman Flores insists that claims this GOP tax-reform bill will negatively impact Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and increased deficits are “categorically 0.” If so, why did follow-up stories then report House Speaker Paul Ryan and others now want to reform those very programs, beginning by calling them the pejorative term of “welfare.” The higher deficits will put pressure on the budget reconciliation processes where there are already voices crying for cutbacks in those programs to pay for higher defense spending.
