Republicans ready to defeat tax bill to help Trump
A tax bill with bipartisan support passed in the House on a 357 to 70 to vote. The bill, if approved by the Senate, would be a significant achievement because it expands the amount of the child tax credit available to lower-income families—a key Biden objective. In exchange, the bill would maintain business tax deductions scheduled to expire. The details are here: WaPo, House votes to expand child tax credit, beef up corporate tax breaks. (Accessible to all.)
The fact that the bill made it through the fractious House should be a good sign of likely passage in the Senate. Sadly, it is not. Why? Because Senate Republicans don’t want to give President Biden a “win” in an election year. Sound familiar? See USA Today, GOP senator doesn’t want to pass a tax bill because it could make Biden ‘look good’.
Per USA Today, Senator Grassley said,
Passing a tax bill that makes the president look good — mailing out checks before the election — means he could be re-elected, and then we won’t extend the 2017 tax cuts.
Not to be outdone, Senator Mitt Romney said he would oppose the bill because it would turn into “another entitlement program which is massively expensive.”
Grassley’s comment is telling on many levels. First, it contains the naked admission that Republicans are no longer working to serve the American people but are, instead, concerned only with serving their overlord, Donald Trump.
Moreover, Grassley is wrong in asserting that the bill will “send checks” to Americans in an election year. The child tax credit is just that—a tax credit offsets taxes owed. If a taxpayer owes no tax, then the tax credit can generate a refund (up to $1,600).
Worse, Grassley opposes the bill in the hope that Trump will be able to extend his 2017 tax cuts for millionaires—which added $3.5 trillion to the deficit (through 2033). Extending those tax cuts would increase the deficit even more.
To increase the likelihood of granting windfall tax cuts to the nation’s top income earners in another Trump administration, Senators Grassley and Romney want to deprive tax benefits to the working poor—benefits that Romney derisively calls “entitlements.”
Romney, a former hedge fund manager, has no problem with the “carried interest deduction” for hedge fund managers, which generates billions in tax deductions for the nation’s wealthiest billionaires. In Romney’s view, the carried interest deduction isn’t an “entitlement” because billionaires and millionaires should get to keep their money free of taxes because they are “special.”
We once again stand at the precipice of legislative action that will benefit the American people—but Republicans oppose it because doing so is contrary to Donald Trump's partisan interests. Don’t believe me? Just ask Senator Chuck Grassley.
Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter
