How to Rig an Economy

THE NEW REPUBLICAN TAX CODE WILL BE PAID FOR BY THE MIDDLE CLASS

Make no mistake, when billionaires get a tax cut, the middle class will pay.

If you learn only one thing from this website, know this: the day they passed the new tax code, Republican politicians essentially handed almost $2 trillion to the political donor class.

Don’t listen to their propaganda, this wasn’t a middle-class tax cut. It’s going almost exclusively towards the wealthy. The top 1% is getting 83% of the benefit of the entire bill, 83% of that $1.9 trillion all funneled towards the top. And that $1.9 trillion comes with incredible costs for the middle class.

Medicare and Medicaid on the Chopping Block

Just a few months after transferring nearly two trillion dollars into the pockets of the billionaire contributors, Republicans in the House released their proposed budget. Their plan would cut $537 billion from Medicare and $1.5 trillion from Medicaid and other health programs over the next decade (not to mention $2.6 trillion in reductions to other spending programs including food stamps and other anti-poverty measures). That is OVER $2 TRILLION cut from programs that protect millions of American citizens and that provide stability to our entire society.

Would you rather hand the political donor class $1.9 trillion, or pay for the Children’s Health Insurance Program – CHIP – which provides health insurance to 9 million poor children and costs about $14 billion a year? In a particularly disgusting example of misplaced priorities, the exact same week that Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, helped push the new Republican tax code through the Senate, he publicly discussed how difficult it was to find funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a very popular bipartisan program that costs about $14 billion per year. Hatch said, “The reason CHIP’s having trouble is because we don’t have money anymore, and to just add more and more spending and more and more spending, and you can look at the rest of the bill for the more and more spending.” It’s disgraceful.

Did you know that 64% of Americans in nursing homes are dependent on Medicaid? Would you rather turn over $1.9 trillion of America’s money to the donor class, or keep it to help seniors cover the costs of nursing home care? Because according to Republicans, we can’t do both.

Our Crumbling Infrastructure

Our nation’s infrastructure is falling apart. Decades of mismanagement and a lack of funds have left the roads, bridges, and pipes that we all rely on in disrepair. Our aviation system received a “D” rating. The American Society of Civil Engineers said we need $4.5 trillion to repair America’s infrastructure needs. This is a crisis, and it’s going to be so much harder to address now that we’re nearly $2 trillion further in the hole because of the Republican tax bill. Instead of spending that money on tax cuts for the rich, we could have spent it on:

• Repairing the 56,000 structurally deficient bridges in the country.
• Replacing the one million pipes that bring clean drinking water to millions of people across the country – many of which are almost 100 years old.
• Fixing the 15,500 high-hazard dams in the US.
• Shoring up the 200,000 bridges in the US that are more than 50 years old.
• Upgrading the nation’s electric grids.
• Fixing levees – like the ones that failed us in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.