Paul Waldman: Republicans making tax bill even worse

I suppose you have to give Republicans some credit. Faced with a task they’ve been looking forward to for years, one that involves distributing goodies, they’ve managed to create a truly extraordinary political and policy nightmare, both for themselves and the country. Though they’re crafting their tax bill largely in secret in an absurdly short amount of time, it keeps getting worse and worse.

In the latest news, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concludes that it’s even more punishing toward low- and middle-income people than we thought. The Washington Post’s Heather Long reports:

“The Senate Republican tax plan gives substantial tax cuts and benefits to Americans earning more than $100,000 a year, while the nation’s poorest would be worse off, according to a report released Sunday by the CBO.

“Republicans are aiming to have the full Senate vote on the tax plan as early as this week, but the new CBO analysis showing large, harmful effects on the poor may complicate those plans. The CBO also said the bill would add $1.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, a potential problem for Republican lawmakers worried about America’s growing debt. …

“By 2019, Americans earning less than $30,000 a year would be worse off under the Senate bill, CBO found. By 2021, Americans earning $40,000 or less would be net losers, and by 2027, most people earning less than $75,000 a year would be worse off. On the flip side, millionaires and those earning $100,000 to $500,000 would be big beneficiaries, according to the CBO’s calculations.”

Much of the harm to those making under $75,000 comes from people losing insurance subsidies and seeing their premiums increase because of the elimination of the individual health insurance mandate. But even when you remove the effects of that provision, those earning under $75,000 will still see their taxes increase by 2027, because many of the provisions that help them are set to expire.

The expiration of those provisions is a budget gimmick to make the math work – Republicans would be perfectly happy to make all the changes permanent if they could. But it’s telling that when somebody has to sacrifice, it isn’t the wealthy and corporations who are asked to do so. The corporate tax cuts – which would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy – are permanent. Which tells you exactly where the Republicans’ values lie and whom they’re trying to serve.

This is a profound shift from the way the GOP has gone about cutting taxes in the past, which is that they would give a huge tax break to the wealthy, then promise the middle class and the poor that even if they’re getting little or nothing now, eventually the benefits will trickle down to them. But this time, Republicans are actively raising taxes on poor and middle-class people in order to fund a tax break for the wealthy and corporations. And the closer analysts look at the bill, the worse it seems to be.

If we want to be as fair as possible, we could acknowledge that as the Senate modifies its version of the bill, and as the conference committee arrives at a final version melding that bill with the one the House already passed (assuming the Senate bill passes), there may be changes that remove some of the uglier provisions. The House bill was particularly cruel, eliminating deductions for things like high medical expenses and imposing a huge new tax on graduate students that would make it harder for anyone who isn’t rich to get a Ph.D.

But every time they remove one of those provisions, they’ll have to make up for it by raising taxes on somebody else in order to keep the bill within budgetary limits. And if you think the people they’re going to target for those tax increases are the wealthy, you aren’t acquainted with the Republican Party.

They’re also trying to mollify a few Senate holdouts by sweetening the deal. For instance, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., complains that the bill sets a lower rate for corporations than for “pass-through” businesses, which are usually smaller, and wants the pass-through rate lowered even further than the bill already does. But pass-through rates apply to individuals who happen to own businesses, which means that if Johnson gets his way he’ll be opening the loophole they’re creating even wider, so rich people will be encouraged to reclassify themselves as not employees but as “businesses” and thereby avoid paying taxes. And that’s to a bill that Bloomberg recently described as “littered with loopholes for Wall Street’s wealthiest.” Or as President Donald Trump put it this morning in a tweet:

“The Tax Cut Bill is coming along very well, great support. With just a few changes, some mathematical, the middle class and job producers can get even more in actual dollars and savings and the pass through provision becomes simpler and really works well!”

That’s essentially a jumble of words he vaguely remembered from the last time somebody talked to him about the tax bill, but it does show that things are changing fast. And as they make changes to wrangle the votes they need, Republicans will have to keep finding other taxes to raise.

In other words, it’s extremely likely that as this process moves along, this bill is going to get even worse: More convoluted, more reliant on trickle-down hand-waving and more brutal on people with low incomes and the middle class – all so those who already have the most can get even more. If they can pull it off, it really will be an epic achievement.