House Passes $3.8 Trillion Tax Cut For The Rich While Nation Distracted By Kavanaugh

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While the country tuned in to hear Brett Kavanaugh rage and weep against the unfairness of having to allow a woman to come forward with an allegation of sexual assault against him, Republicans in the House of Representatives, along with three Democrats, passed another $3.8 trillion in tax cuts.

According to Fortune:

‘The House’s new bill takes effect starting in 2025, and would add $600 billion to the national debt within the next decade, and then $3.2 trillion in the 10 years after that, according to Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center.

‘Despite the House vote, it is unlikely the Senate will take up the legislation. The first round of tax cuts landed with a thud, with even a leaked Republican National Committee poll—reported on by Bloomberg News—showing American voters thought it benefited “large corporations and rich Americans” by an overall 2-to-1 margin and the same margin among independent voters.

‘Without special rules in place, the Senate would vote under normal procedures, which can require 60 senators’ votes to pass a bill that is heavily opposed.’

Although Trump and his GOP friends in Congress touted the first round of tax cuts, Trump’s singular accomplishment in his entire first year in the White House, voters have been unimpressed. Other than the most rabidly loyal of Trump fans, most Republican voters see what Democratic voters saw from the beginning: the tax cuts Trump was so proud of helped the very wealthy, but not the working class.

USA Today warns that Trump’s one achievement doesn’t touch the popularity of the ACA when it passed, and President Obama still lost control of Congress following its passage.

‘Republicans should also know about the difficulty of running on legislation. They were the ones who worked the other side of Obamacare so effectively. And they, more than Democrats, have defined themselves by promoting distrust in government. As President Reagan put it: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”

‘And yet here Republicans are, pushing this swell new tax cut law.’

Unfortunately for the GOP, there just aren’t enough wealthy people to vote them into power in 2018.

Featured image via Flickr by Mika Popovijk under a Creative Commons license