Republican Wealthfare Tax Bill Nears The Finish Line (UPDATED)

(click on image to enlarge)

(Image: DonkeyHotey)

Assuming (which we do) that Republicans will have enough votes by next week to pass their historically disastrous wealthfare tax bill, it will usher in a period of increasing income inequality, declining public investments, undermine the Affordable Care Act and ultimately provide a rationale for an assault on social safety net programs and discretionary domestic spending -- in other words, every Ayn Rand acolyte's dream. Let's look at some future victims of this vicious piece of Republican sociopathy.

Paul Krugman focuses on the fate of working class Americans, many of whom foolishly backed numbnut Donald "Rump" Trump:

Republicans don’t seem able to help themselves: Their disdain for ordinary working Americans as opposed to investors, heirs, and business owners runs so deep that they can’t contain it. 

When I realized the extent to which G.O.P. tax plans were going to favor business owners over ordinary workers, I found myself remembering what happened in 2012, when Eric Cantor — then the House majority leader — tried to celebrate Labor Day. He put out a tweet for the occasion that somehow failed to mention workers at all, instead praising those who have “built a business and earned their own success.” 

Yes, it was just a gaffe, but a revealing one; Cantor, a creature of the G.O.P. establishment if ever there was one, had so little respect for working Americans that he forgot to include them in a Labor Day message. 

And now that disdain has been translated into legislation, in the form of a bill that treats anyone who works for someone else — that is, the vast majority of Americans — as a second-class citizen.

Fareed (yes, we know) Zakaria focuses on the bill's impact on our competitiveness and the effects of the automatic cuts in discretionary spending the bill will force:

If the Republican tax plan passes Congress, it will mark a watershed for the United States. The medium- and long-term effects of the plan will be a massive drop in public investment, which will come on the heels of decades of declining spending (as a percentage of gross domestic product) on infrastructure, scientific research, skills training and core government agencies. The United States can’t coast on past investments forever, and with this legislation, we are ushering in a bleak future. [snip] 

Those who vote for this tax bill — possibly the worst piece of major legislation in a generation — will live in infamy, as the country slowly breaks down.

John Cassidy discusses the redistribution of wealth the Republicans are aiming for:

As virtually every independent study has shown, the G.O.P. plan showers most of its goodies (tax cuts) on the richest people in the country while doing little for poor and middle-income households. Consider the bill that passed the Senate. If the personal tax cuts and family credits it contains are gradually phased out, as the bill’s authors planned, so that the over-all projected cost of the proposal remains below a limit of $1.5 trillion, then, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, by 2027 the only group paying noticeably less tax would be the richest five per cent of households. 

That was bad enough. But the final bill, which Republican leaders are scheduled to release in full on Friday, is now expected to be even more of a sop to Donald Trump and his fellow-plutocrats. It would reduce the top rate of income tax, which is now about 40.8 per cent when you take into account a 2012 law that limited deductions for high earners, to thirty-seven per cent. That’s lower than the top rates that were proposed in the original bills passed in the Senate and the House. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Republicans cut the top rate further after receiving complaints from high earners in places like California and New York that the original bills weren’t generous enough to them. 

OK, we all know how irretrievably bad this piece of garbage is. We also know it's much more likely than not to pass next week after some posturing weasels =cough= Marco Rubio Susan Collins =cough= get sops to buy their votes. Right now, all we can do is watch the disaster unfold. But this already deeply unpopular bill, passed without serious consideration for obvious reasons, will be seen by more and more as another feature of what we get with Republican governance, along with all the other despicable, unhinged, un- American policies and actions bum rushed by Rump and his enablers in the past 10 months. The energy and momentum that has been built through multiple local special elections, through Virginia and Alabama, will be sustained because of these outrages and our determination to correct them.

UPDATE:  As expected, noble holdout Marco "Glug Glug" Rubio has been bought off for a measly amount and is now a "yes." Pisher.

I wanted to see how much a favor Rubio did low income families with his act today.

For a family w 2 kids, the average cost of daycare is $2k/month.@marcorubio just secured $25/month for that family.

This same bill allows wealthy kids to inherit $11 million tax free.

— Andy Slavitt (@ASlavitt) December 15, 2017

UPDATE II:  Another giant of the Senate folds - "Little Bob" Corker.