Well, it only took Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McCONnell slightly less than a year to do it, but they finally did it. One of their top legislative priorities--tax cuts--is now the law of the land. For better or for worse.
Which one of those applies to you? Well, it depends. If you're a corporation, or a limited liability company, an investor whose income largely comes from passive investments (i.e., ones that require no work), an overseas investor, or just a member of the Lucky Sperm Club with the expectancy of a large inheritance, you should be doing somersaults from sea to shining sea. The cuts you will get from the so-called Tax Cut and Jobs Act are easily large enough to justify all of the money you've spent since the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision to buy up every branch of American government, lock, stock and barrel.
On the other hand, if you are the proverbial working stiff, if you are not part of the 1%, guess what you get? Peanuts on the dollar. You get a tax cut that, in the best-case scenario, will give you an extra thirty dollars a week! Oooooh. Feel it burning in your pocket already?
Well, if you don't, you should. Because now I come to the fiscal heart of darkness when it comes to this rancid piece of so-called "tax reform." It is not being financed by spending cuts, at least not up front (more on that later). It is being financed by a conscious decision to increase the national debt by over 1 trillion dollars over the next decade. That's right--the party of fiscal responsibility is opting for spendthrift practices in order to pay for this boondoggle. But only in the short run. Again, more on that later.
But who will really pay? All of us. Including you. Because, real-world economics being the nasty thing that it is, an increase in government borrowing will lead to an increase in interest rates for everyone. Including you. That credit-card debt you have? That auto loan you'd like to pay off as quickly as possible? That mortgage you hope you can liquidate before your lender wakes up one morning and decides that it would be fun to foreclose on you, even though you've never been late even once on a payment? Guess what? Those interest rates are going up, up, UP. In other words, you can kiss that extra thirty dollars a week bye-bye.
Oh, and did I mention that, in about five years or so, that thirty dollars a week is going to go away? You see, in order to keep the national debt from exploding even more than it will under the new tax bill, the tax cuts for working stiffs expire in five years. Go away. Perhaps forever. But this is OK, per Trump and his cronies, because politics in five years will prevent this from actually happening. Yes, that's their argument. Not mine.
In short, this tax bill works only for the investing class. And why should that be a surprise? The investing class now owns Congress. And the members of the current congressional majority have one thing, and only one thing in common with you: they want to keep their jobs, and they will do whatever they can to accomplish that.
That is reflected in the substance of this bill, much of which is targeted against Democratic constituencies, such as states with high taxes, universities, people who depend on the Affordable Care Act, and coastal areas devastated by ecological disasters. Under this bill, those taxes and the cost of those disasters will be less deductible, the universities' endowments will be less sheltered from taxes, and ACA premiums will almost certainly go up, thanks to the bill's repeal of the individual mandate to buy insurance. Take a look. Take a look again. And yet again.
Perhaps even worse, since it directly reflects the perversion of the legislative process by which all federal bills are enacted, the desperation of congressional Republicans to keep their jobs and their majority is reflected in the lack of process by which the bill made its way through the House and Senate. Not only was much of the bill handwritten at the very last minute, but lobbyists had copies of proposed amendments before congressional Democrats had a chance to know that they existed, to say nothing of actually being able to read them. Again, take a look. In our constitutional form of government, due process is meant to be substantive as well as procedural. Under the Republicans, due process is little more than a phrase.
As for all of that explosive job and wage growth that Trump keeps tweeting about, well, you can pretty much forget about that. Your employers are planning to turn all of that extra money not into wages, but into dividends. As for the jobs themselves, well, those are even less certain, I'm afraid. Those are probably going to be automated out of existence, or shipped overseas, with the aid of the money that Congress has just voted to give to its donors--er, your employers. One more time, take a look, and yet another one.
Putting this as simply as possible: Republicans in Congress are not on your side, but on the side of the investor/donor class. Even the so-called "good ones," like Susan Collins of Maine, will lie to their constituents, even at the risk of facing their wrath. As for the less-good-ones, like Charles Grassley of Iowa, they will simply elect to treat them with open contempt.
Repealing and replacing this rancid bill should be the first priority of the Democratic Congress that will be elected next year, along with initiating the process of impeaching Trump. In fact, it has been suggested that, given the way in which the GOP used their bill as a Christmas tree on which to hang other legislative priorities, such as abortion and oil drilling, perhaps the Democrats should thank the Republicans for setting that precedent and erecting their own legislative Tannenbaum. It would be a small step toward re-establishing a level playing field on behalf of the people for whom Congress is supposed to work.
Namely, you and me. And we'd better hope that their is a Democratic Congress. Because, otherwise, this is how the tax bill is going to be paid for. Again, by you and me.
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