Democrats Attack Tax Bill
Republicans will pitch their tax bill this week as a gift to the middle class, but Democrats call it a windfall for big business and the rich dressed as a tax cut for workers. The tensions over who will benefit from the sweeping tax rewrite were on display during an hourlong meeting last week between President Trump and Senate Finance Committee members. Democrats who attended, including many whose states Mr. Trump won, said the president agreed with every point raised on the subject of tax cuts for the middle class. At the end of the meeting, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon told Mr. Trump that the tax bill Republicans were drafting would not deliver on his promises to the middle class and would instead benefit corporations and high earners.
Democrats have little expectation that Republican lawmakers will take notice when House lawmakers introduce their tax bill next week. And Mr. Wyden and other Democrats are not waiting. They are already attacking the legislation as a bait and switch in the hopes that they can find a path forward to a bipartisan tax bill that they believe will truly benefit middle class Americans. Democrats hope that by killing the Republican bill, they can work with Mr. Trump to create bipartisan legislation that achieves a middle-class tax cut. “There are areas where we can come together,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, “but there’s no way we can come together on raising taxes on the middle class. That’s the Achilles’ heel of their bill”.
Republicans are putting the middle class at the forefront of the discussion of their plan to pass the most sweeping rewrite of the tax code in a generation. Their primary claim is that cutting taxes on businesses, including reducing the top corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent, will generate large wage gains for American workers. The House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, told reporters on Thursday that “the entire purpose of this tax bill is to cut middle-class taxes. Republicans argue that lightening the tax burden on businesses will generate economic growth to help offset the cost of the plan.
Crucial details of the House Senate versions of the plan are still unknown, in part because Republicans are struggling with how to pay for the tax cuts they are envisioning. Many of the details still in flux are important because they would affect middle-class taxpayers directly, including the boundaries of income-tax brackets, the size of an expanded child tax credit and the fate of some deductions that Republicans had targeted for elimination, such as one for state and local taxes paid.
Depending on how the details are filled in, such a tax bill could reduce income taxes on nearly all middle class families or it could raise them for millions of middle class families, by eliminating deductions and other tax breaks and not reducing rates enough to make up for that.
In recent years, Mr.Wyden has written two sweeping tax overhaul bills with Republican Senate colleagues. But Mr. Wyden is sharply critical of the bill Republicans are drafting now, which he said includes gifts to big businesses and the wealthy, “funny math” for budget scoring that will assess the cost of the plan, increased deficits and “a bunch of false promises to the middle class.” He said he hoped that the bill would collapse and that Mr. Trump would turn to a bipartisan effort centered on the middle class instead.
