I would add the other slick little trick that they're pulling is they're saying, "Oh, those tax breaks for people, those expire in 10 years. Tax breaks for corporations, they're there forever." And of course the billionaires who take their money out of the corporations, implicitly.
So, you think you're getting a middle-class tax cut? Well, first of all only, about half the middle class might get even a tiny tax cut. The other half of the middle class is going to pay more. There are two pieces in the New York Times about this Republican tax scam.
The first from the Editorial Board of the New York Times -- they're not just all liberals, they represent a wide variety of opinions from left to right. But there are some things that just have to do with truth.
So, the Republicans passed a budget recently -- both through both the House and the Senate and Trump signed it -- that provided for increasing the national debt by 1.5 trillion dollars that they can give to billionaires like Donald Trump, saying your estate will not have to pay an inheritance tax when it hands your money to your undeserving children. Because if they were deserving they would have been paid and they would have paid taxes on that income. There's just simple principles here.
A press release from Don Owens of Public Citizen says...
"The tax holiday proposal supported by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans would give eight top technology corporations a $95 billion tax break, a new report from Public Citizen and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) reveals."
Now keep mind, these are among the most profitable companies in the history of human civilization. They are sitting collectively on hundreds of billions of dollars in cash. They are not cash strapped. They are not in need of more money to expand or hire new people. All of that is total BS.
Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, said...
"The richest company in history is hardly in need of a nearly $50 billion tax benefit."
And that's the amount of money that will go to Apple -- $47.1 billion. The press release continues...
"The eight tech giants collectively hold more than $502 billion offshore, much of which is booked to their 94 tax haven subsidiaries across the globe."
Just Apple is sitting on $252.3 billion overseas. So in exchange for giving Apple and Trump and his billionaire buddies this huge tax break, here's what the editorial board of the New York Times says, the Republicans have to find $200 billion dollars to pay for this.
So, number one: do away with the individual mandate on Obamacare -- that'll get you a couple hundred billion, well, we're not sure exactly how much money it'll get you but a lot of people will say, "well, you know, I'm young and healthy -- I don't need health insurance" and they'll drop off and so they're no longer paying into the program.
So then the insurance system really starts to crash.
Number two: planning on adopting a child? Republicans are doing away with a $13,000 child adoption tax credit. This is going to give them $3.8 billion that they're stealing from adoptive families that they can give to billionaires.
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