The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com.
Trump and the GOP want to jam the “Big Beautiful Act” through Congress before voters grasp what’s in it. However, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Budget Model and Yale University’s Budget Lab independently came to the same conclusion: the legislation is full of tax cuts (dodges) for the rich and some tax cuts for the middle and working classes, “offset” by deep cuts in health care coverage, hunger assistance and deficit spending. (Washington Post). Polls show little support for the bill.
The legislation is stunningly duplicitous. A NYT op-ed by Jacob Hacker and Patrick Sullivan exposed the tax dodges: “Take two of these mystery provisions: an expanded and permanent deduction for ‘pass-through’ business income and a higher (and also permanently indexed) threshold for the estate tax. Together those two items would cost more than $1 trillion … . And both the ‘pass-through’ and the estate tax changes would benefit the richest of the rich … .”
Wisconsin GOP Senator Ron Johnson has always supported making the “pass-through” deduction more generous. Johnson has admitted his self-interest: “Now, did my business benefit? Sure. Did some of my donor businesses? Sure. When you give tax relief to everybody, everybody benefits” (MJS). However, the top 1% receive 61-70% of this tax dodge. And, former Trump-appointed IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said the “pass-through” dodge has long been abused by big corporations, cheating the U.S. in billions of unpaid taxes.
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The other tax dodge is “to permanently allow wealthy families to pass on more of their assets tax-free, as the federal government all but abandons taxing large inheritances” (Washington Post). The Trump 2017 tax cuts ended the estate tax for almost all, temporarily increasing the estate threshold to above $11.2 million (individual) and $22.4 million (married couple). After the 2017 changes less than 3,000 estates, including 50 farms paid the estate tax (Washington Post). In 2018, only 70 estates in Wisconsin paid the estate tax (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities). Johnson voted for this tax dodge. And, the wealth gap got bigger and worse. There’s more.
The “Big Beautiful Act” will pay for tax dodges by slashing health care coverage, food assistance and increasing the national debt. GOP hypocrisy. The CBO estimated 16 million, including 258,396 Wisconsinites, will lose Medicaid and Affordable Care Act private insurance health care coverage. Millions, including 90,000 Wisconsinites, will lose Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program coverage or see reduced benefits. Is the GOP “the party of working people or of the rich and powerful? Legislation speaks louder than words” (Hacker and Sullivan).
Johnson won agreement for a vote on killing Medicaid expansion, to switch his vote to support advancing the bill. He earlier joined other Republicans to “dismiss warnings on Medicaid cuts, uncompensated care” (Modern Healthcare). Johnson said: “Hospitals are rolling in the dough”, rebuking them – “Get a new (business) model.” He ignores struggling rural hospitals nationally and in Wisconsin. Johnson has shown facts don’t matter. Cruelty disguised as “reforms” doesn’t make America great but heartless.
–Kaplan wrote a guest column from Washington, D.C., for the Wisconsin State Journal from 1995 – 2009.
