"It's immoral that many hardworking families will pay a higher tax bill or lose access to critical services like healthcare so that some CEO can get a bigger bonus and buy a bigger yacht."
by Jake Johnson
By a vote of 227-205, House Republicans on Thursday passed a tax bill that would permanently cut taxes for massive corporations, reward the extremely wealthy by eliminating the estate tax, trigger billions of dollars in automatic cuts to Medicare, and raise taxes on millions of middle- and working-class families.
"With this bill, the House GOP is moving to rig the system further for the powerful and elite against everyday Americans," Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, said in a statement following Thursday's vote. "It's immoral that many hardworking families will pay a higher tax bill or lose access to critical services like healthcare so that some CEO can get a bigger bonus and buy a bigger yacht. Millions of Americans in the middle and at the bottom will be the losers from this tax plan, while the wealthiest will benefit."
According to an analysis released by the Joint Committee on Taxation, everyone earning under $75,000 a year would on average see their taxes rise by 2027 under the House's plan. The wealthiest Americans and the largest corporations, by contrast, would see their taxes fall drastically.
As the Washington Post notes, the House bill—which calls for $1.5 trillion in tax cuts—"delivers more than 80 percent of its overall cuts to corporations, business owners, and wealthy families who are subject to the federal estate tax."
It is these facts that led Terrence Meehan of the Patriotic Millionaires to label the House GOP's plan "welfare for the wealthy" in a video published following Thursday's vote.
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The House's approval of the tax plan was a major step toward President Donald Trump's expressed goal of ramming through tax cuts by the end of the year.
The Senate Republicans are expected to vote on their own plan before Thanksgiving. In addition to providing similarly enormous tax cuts to the rich while hiking taxes on millions of middle class and poor families, the Senate bill also includes a provision that repeals the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate, which the Congressional Budget Office has estimated would strip healthcare from 13 million Americans.
Originally published on CommonDreams.org