Greed has won: U.S. Senate passes final version of Republicans’ depraved tax scam

Tonight, greedy Repub­li­cans suc­ceed­ed in over­com­ing the last of the leg­isla­tive hur­dles that once stood in the way of their odi­ous plot to plun­der Amer­i­ca’s com­mon wealth on behalf of their cor­rupt, preda­to­ry donor class.

By a vote of fifty-one to forty-eight, the Unit­ed States Sen­ate vot­ed along par­ty lines to pass the final ver­sion of the fis­cal­ly irre­spon­si­ble Trump/Ryan/McConnell tax scam, which will hurt mil­lions of Amer­i­can fam­i­lies while mak­ing the already rich even rich­er. It will also sub­stan­tial­ly increase the nation­al debt, which Repub­li­cans pro­fessed to care about low­er­ing dur­ing the pres­i­den­cy of Barack Obama.

Not a sin­gle Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tor vot­ed for the Mar-a-Lago tax cuts, not even the ones from red states that Trump had been woo­ing over the past few months, so the Repub­li­cans can­not adver­tise their tax scam as a bipar­ti­san accomplishment.

They — and they alone — own it.

“From the very start, [Don­ald] Trump and Repub­li­cans shut out Democ­rats, non­par­ti­san experts, and the vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans because they knew this leg­is­la­tion would nev­er sur­vive the light of day,” said Wash­ing­ton’s senior Unit­ed States Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray fol­low­ing the vote. “The result of their closed-door nego­ti­a­tions is a ter­ri­bly par­ti­san bill that fun­nels even more mon­ey to those at the very top, at the expense of hard­work­ing fam­i­lies and future generations.”

“From the mil­lions of Amer­i­cans who will lose health cov­er­age or see their pre­mi­ums go up, to the mid­dle class fam­i­lies who will see their tax bill increase in the com­ing years, to the pris­tine region of Alas­ka that will open to drilling, it’s hard to over­state the cru­el­ty of the Trump-Repub­li­can bill,” Mur­ray added.

“It’s also hard to over­state the hypocrisy of so-called fis­cal con­ser­v­a­tives who appar­ent­ly didn’t think twice about blow­ing a mas­sive hole in our deficit and endan­ger­ing Social Secu­ri­ty, Medicare, and Med­ic­aid— all so they could dole out more tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy and the Trump family.”

“While I am deeply dis­ap­point­ed [Don­ald] Trump and Repub­li­cans suc­ceed­ed in jam­ming their destruc­tive bill through with­out real hear­ings, true open­ness to amend­ments, bipar­ti­san input — or allow­ing the Sen­a­tor-elect from Alaba­ma [Doug Jones] to cast a vote — I am extreme­ly proud of the mil­lions of peo­ple from every cor­ner of this coun­try who made their voic­es heard and who did every­thing they could to high­light the gross inequities of the GOP tax bill.”

“I want the Amer­i­can peo­ple to know this fight is not over,” Mur­ray said in clos­ing. “I urge every­one to join me in con­tin­u­ing to hold Repub­li­cans account­able for their votes — and to work with Democ­rats to reverse the pieces of this leg­is­la­tion that so heav­i­ly tip the scales to the wealth­i­est in the country.”

House Repub­li­cans still have to rub­ber stamp the final ver­sion of the tax scam a sec­ond time tomor­row, but that’s expect­ed to be a for­mal­i­ty at this point.

The real dif­fi­cul­ty was always in the Unit­ed States Sen­ate, and Mitch McConnell over­came that dif­fi­cul­ty by fig­ur­ing out what price he’d have to pay to pro­cure the votes of each the most recal­ci­trant mem­bers of his cau­cus… from Maine’s Susan Collins to Alaska’s Lisa Murkows­ki to Ten­nessee’s Bob Cork­er to Ari­zon­a’s Jeff Flake.

John McCain did not par­tic­i­pate in the final vote on the bill due to com­pli­ca­tions of his can­cer treat­ment. McCain, Collins, and Murkows­ki had pre­vi­ous­ly helped sink sev­er­al attempts to repeal the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act with Trumpcuts.

It’s hard to put into words how awful this bill is. We could call it uncon­scionable, destruc­tive, sin­is­ter, abom­inable, vile, or rapacious.

Maybe it would just be eas­i­er to say that this bill is an act of evil.

We view this bill as an utter betray­al of the val­ues and prin­ci­ples that this coun­try was found­ed on, and if not repealed before its most dam­ag­ing pro­vi­sions go into effect, it could leave hor­ren­dous scars of all sorts in every state and every territory.

Here’s some analy­sis we’d rec­om­mend read­ing in order to under­stand the mag­ni­tude of the awful­ness of this bill:

• Cen­ter on Bud­get and Pol­i­cy Pri­or­i­ties: Final Repub­li­can tax bill skewed to top, hurts many low and mid­dle income Americans
• Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy Insti­tute: The argu­ments sup­port­ing cor­po­rate tax cuts are wrong, and ter­ri­to­r­i­al tax­a­tion will make things worse
• Insti­tute on Tax­a­tion and Eco­nom­ic Pol­i­cy: The final Trump-Repub­li­can tax plan: Nation­al and fifty state esti­mates for 2019 & 2027
• Cen­ter for Amer­i­can Progress: The final tax bill is a big­ger win for for­eign investors than the entire work­ing and mid­dle class in Trump states

NPI thanks every­one who made calls, wrote let­ters, or sent emails in oppo­si­tion to the Trump/Ryan/McConnell tax scam. By speak­ing out, we made it clear that we do not assent to this destruc­tive, self­ish, mean-spir­it­ed legislation.