Senate Republicans Are Trying to Give the 1 Percent a $1.9 Trillion Tax Break

[babylonsister]

https://www.thenation.com/article/senate-republicans-are-trying-to-give-the-1-percent-a-1-9-trillion-tax-break/

Senate Republicans Are Trying to Give the 1 Percent a $1.9 Trillion Tax Break
Senators Bernie Sanders and Tammy Baldwin led the opposition with a pair of amendments that challenged a “horrible bill.”
By John Nichols
October 20, 2017


The Senate voted Thursday to massively increase income inequality in the United States by using the power of the federal government to redistribute wealth upward. By a narrow 51-49 vote, the chamber backed a budget measure that clears the way for Republicans to enact epic tax cuts for corporate elites, mega-millionaires and billionaires.

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It’s not a radical idea to suggest that at a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when the people on top are doing unbelievably well, at a time when the middle class is shrinking, now is not the time to provide hundreds of billion of dollars of tax breaks to the very wealthiest families in this country.

Forty-four Democrats, Maine independent Angus King, and Sanders backed the amendment. But it was blocked by 51 Republicans and one Democrat: North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp. (Though Heitkamp opposed the overall budget measure, her vote on the amendment broke faith not merely with her fellow Senate Democrats but also with the historic populist tradition of the Nonpartisan League that gave its name to her home state’s Democratic-Nonpartisan League Party.)

Baldwin, a Wisconsinite who traces her politics to another populist movement of the upper Midwest (that of the Wisconsin progressives who supported Senator Robert M. La Follette’s battles against wealth and privilege), proposed an amendment that focused on the fiscal irresponsibility of the GOP scheme. She sought to reinstate a Senate rule that would effectively prevent Republicans from increasing the deficit in order to fund tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. Proponents of sound budgeting hailed the Wisconsinite’s proposal, with Maya MacGuineas, the president of the Committee for a Responsible Budget, declaring that

The amendment offered by Senator Baldwin would restore a shield to prevent reconciliation from being used to add to the debt. It is fiscal common sense and important especially now as lawmakers confront growing debt.

Fiscal common sense won the votes of 47 Democrats and independents who caucus with the Democrats. But 51 Republican votes blocked the Baldwin amendment.

So it was that the Senate voted to advance a Trump-backed, Koch-promoted “tax reform” agenda that is is intended not only to make the rich richer but also to pay for this transfer of wealth by robbing from the rest of us and by creating deficits that will weaken the ability of the federal government to function and that will burden working-class taxpayers for decades to come.

This is, as Sanders says “Robin Hood in reverse” budgeting. But it does not stop there. If the Trump-GOP plan is enacted, generations of working families will continue to be robbed, year and year, in order to keep taxes low for the Koch brothers and the billionaire class.

[kentuck]

1. In reality, it is a battle between "balanced-budget conservatives" or the newer brand.

Most conservatives in the past were very steadfast in their support for less spending and balanced budgets.

Nowadays, not so sure?