Republican Tax Bill Opens Floodgates to Outsourcing of Investment and Entrenches Dynastic Wealth for Generations
Dec. 2, 2017
Republican Tax Bill Opens Floodgates to Outsourcing of Investment and Entrenches Dynastic Wealth for Generations
Statement of Robert Weissman, President, Public Citizen
Note: During the middle of the night, the U.S. Senate passed a pro-corporate GOP income tax bill that sabotages the U.S. tax code and primarily benefits corporations and wealthy heirs. Conservative lawmakers, on a party line vote, save one Republican Sen. Bob Corker (Tenn.,) have singlehandedly ensured that jobs and investments will be outsourced while generational wealth will stay in the hands of a few American families, leaving only short-term scraps for middle class families, our communities, and seniors.
Republicans in the US Senate just voted to weaken our country profoundly.
• Our Robber Baron levels of inequality would be worsened by estate tax provisions facilitating dynastic accumulation of wealth.
• Our health care system, already the worst among industrialized countries, would see millions more without insurance coverage, rising insurance rates, and Medicare cutbacks.
• Corporations that have evaded taxes by parking profits overseas, often through financial engineering of questionable legality, would be rewarded with a tax holiday – and incentives to transfer more profits and jobs overseas.
• The superrich would be invited to drastically cut their taxes, through a simple maneuver of incorporation.
• And, the revenue lost from the tax giveaways will lead to Republican demands – already starting, evidencing their limitless cynicism – to reduce deficits, demands that will translate into proposals to cut Social Security, Medicare and other vital government programs and investments.
The public justifications for this horrible bill are transparently false. It will not improve the economy, it will not create jobs, it will not help the middle class.
What the bill will do is benefit the donor class, which is the one and only reason Republicans are ramming it through.
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