The Republi-CON's Big CON: Tax Cuts for the Middle Class

"While Republicans in the Senate work out how to take health insurance away from millions of Americans, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) turns his attention to the other great crusade that animates his career: tax cuts. . .

While Ryan may not get everything he wants out of tax reform, he stands a very good chance of getting most of it. Republicans will move heaven and earth to pass something not because they feel pressure from their constituents — Americans are not exactly crying out for tax cuts — but because they believe in it. If we can’t cut taxes on the wealthy, they ask each other, then why are we here? What’s the point of having power if you don’t use it for this? So here’s what Ryan is proposing to do, per the speech excerpts:

    Lower income-tax rates
    Reduce the number of tax brackets
    Raise the standard deduction
    Eliminate the inheritance tax (Big congrats to Donny Jr., Eric, Ivanka and Barron for not having to worry about paying taxes! Oh, and Tiffany — she’ll probably get something, too.)
    Eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, which is meant to ensure that the wealthy can’t get away without paying anything
    Eliminate unspecified loopholes
    But keep the mortgage interest deduction and charitable giving deduction
    Cut the corporate tax rate
    Allow corporations to pay reduced taxes on profits they bring back from overseas
    Institute a border adjustment tax to favor exports over imports

Among these, only the increase in the standard deduction is aimed at the non-wealthy. As the Tax Policy Center wrote last year about an earlier version of this plan:

    Three-quarters of total tax cuts would go to the top 1 percent, who would receive an average cut of nearly $213,000, or 13.4 percent of after-tax income. The top 0.1 percent would receive an average tax cut of about $1.3 million (16.9 percent of after-tax income). In contrast, the average tax cut for the lowest-income households would be just $50."

Read the Washington Post, Paul Ryan’s passionate call to cut taxes on the wealthy and corporations.