GOP Tax Scam



USA Today reports: How corporations and the rich are fueling inequality

Political and economic power are now inseparable. We must dismantle not just this abysmal plan but also the structural conditions that wrought it.

 

The tax plan that Republican congressional leaders hope to pass this week and send to President Trump will soon be regarded as the zenith in a story nearly 40 years in the making, where corporations and a handful of America’s wealthiest families — some of whom now hold positions in the government directly — leverage their outsized economic power into political power. It is what happens when corporate and political power become inseparable. It is a call to arms to dismantle not just the plan itself, but the structural conditions that wrought it.

 

The compromise House-Senate plan, like the separate bills each chamber passed earlier, so lacks a clear policy or economic justification that it can only be explained as pure pander to Republican donor interests. Though have some tried to marshal policy arguments in favor, each fails on its merits.

 

Economists and CEOs on both the left and right have been clear that the massive corporate tax cuts will not create jobs. The Tax Policy Center, the Joint Committee on Taxation, and every other credible analysis has indicated only a small share of the corporate windfall will reach workers. Even CEOs themselves admitted they would not use the money to invest. And the most damning evidence that the GOP’s purpose is to appease donor interests came from senators themselves, who admitted their financial contributions would dry up if they didn’t pass a tax package.

 

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Like the multinational corporations that demanded it, the Republican tax bill is extractive, taking money from middle-class Americans in order to finance tax cuts for the rich. In much the same way that corporate executives leverage their power to outsource jobs, borrow money, close plants, and squeeze supply chains in order to provide pay-outs to the company’s wealthy shareholders, Republicans have leveraged their power to raise taxes on workers, cut Medicare, borrow money from future generations, and outsource jobs in order to provide pay-outs to the corporate interests that are, in effect, congressional Republicans’ wealthy shareholders. When Senate Democrats offered an amendment to require corporations benefiting from the tax cut to raise wages at the same rate they reward shareholders and CEOs, every single Republican senator opposed it.

 

 


 

Those Republican cons in the know
have their tax scam all ready to go.
Watch the rich get a lift
and the poor get short shrift
by kleptocracy’s brutal elbow.

When kleptocracy’s brutal elbow
delivers its mightiest blow,
democracy loses
and nurses its bruises
in a trumpian reality show.

Susan Eckenrode, 12/18/17

 

GOP Mantra 2009

elephant dump

Just say no to Obama so
We want to see Obama go
He wants to give to the poor and needy
We want to help the rich and greedy

Just say no to every bill,
The poor will feel a bitter pill.
Cut the tax rate of the rich to zero
We’ll become their tea party hero

Just say yes to what we write
Make the left seem not so bright
Make sure it hurts those most in need
They are the victims of our dirty deeds

Just say no to Obama so
we can see this President go
No more help for the unemployed
Make Corporations overjoyed.

We pledge to the Corporate heads,
We will cut taxes and their overhead
We’ll be sure to destroy the masses
The poor and needy can kiss our asses.

 

© 2017 M. Suzanne Wyatt

Image Source

 

Like the characters cast in cartoons

Seth Meyers of NBC began his segment discussing the damning Congressional Budget Office analysis of the healthcare bill, released on Monday.

 

“We found out today that the GOP healthcare bill could leave 22 million uninsured,” he explained, “which may be why Republicans are trying a new tactic to defend it: lying.”

 

Late-night hosts blast GOP healthcare bill as ‘comically villainous’

 

 


 

Like the characters cast in cartoons
come the villainous, bumbling buffoons
on their mission of mean
as they sway and careen
to their president’s looniest tunes.

 

Susan Eckenrode, 6/28/17

Watch Republicans, masters of stealth


 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday delayed a vote on the Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act until after the July 4 recess, indicating he lacks support to advance the bill.

 

The delay came one day after the Congressional Budget Office estimated that 22 million people would lose coverage under the GOP plan, thanks in large part to massive cuts to Medicaid.

 

The delay buys McConnell, who could only afford to lose two GOP votes, more time to shore up support in his caucus.

 

Here’s Where Key Senators Stand On The GOP Health Care Bill
Huffington Post

 

Watch Republicans, masters of stealth,
in the art of distributing wealth,
conspire to get more
by stripping the poor
of affordable care for their health.

 

© Susan Eckenrode, 6/27/17

The egregious Republican chorus

It is abundantly clear that Trump and his party possess a deep disdain for sick people, the poor and other vulnerable members of American society and wish to do them harm.

 

[…]

 

Today’s version of American conservatism is also a celebration of selfishness — and a belief that true freedom and liberty are based on a perverse individualism with little sense of common decency or linked fate with someone’s fellow citizens. Today’s American conservatism also embraces an extreme form of neoliberalism whereby human worth and dignity are determined by profit-and-loss statements and capitalism and democracy are confused with one another. Ultimately, American conservatism is a value system that is antisocial, anti-democratic and anti-freedom.

 

There is a moral obligation to speak plainly and directly in a time of crisis. To wit: The Republican Party’s so-called health care reform is designed to kill, injure and bankrupt the poor, the sick and the weak, in order to line the pockets of the 1 percent. As Republicans have repeatedly shown, the supposed “party of life” is actually the “party of death.”

 

The “pro-life” party has become the party of death:
New research on why Republicans
hate poor and sick people

Salon

 

The egregious Republican chorus
holds ethical standards so porous
they’ll prop up an ass
in order to pass
legislation that proves they abhor us.

Mary Boren, 5/31/17

 

Are there any Republicans working

Even conservatives are calling for the GOP to step up to the plate:

“On it went all week—one Trumpian argument after another falling apart. And yet Republican officeholders mostly stuck by their president. Some of them praised Trump. Others avoided comment. Still others focused exclusively — reflexively, predictably — on the (very real) inconsistency of Democrats.”

 

[…]

 

“We understand these arguments. We’ve made some of them. But there are times, when the stakes are high, that self-respecting officeholders need to lead, even if it’s politically risky, rather than circle the wagons.”

 

Where Are the Statesmen in the GOP?
Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire
quoting William Kristol

 


 

Are there any Republicans working
to curb the catastrophe lurking?
Is their own moral compass
subsumed in that trump ass
who’s bilking the country and smirking?

Mary Boren, 5/13/17

The GOP plots without cease

“Democrats quickly jumped on the development, arguing that Republicans are willing to take away protections for the general public, but not themselves. ‘The best evidence yet that the new GOP repeal plan is a disaster for people’s health care is that the GOP exempted Members of Congress from living under it,’ said Leslie Dach, director of the Protect Our Care Campaign, one of the main groups fighting repeal.”

 

House GOP health bill changes exempt members of Congress
The Hill

 


 

The GOP plots without cease
to gut ACA piece by piece,
but provisions it shelves
won’t apply to themselves.
No, it’s only the public they’ll fleece.

© 2017 Mary Boren

The Latest Show on Earth

Photo by Nazim Uddin: "Elephants and Dancers"

What is a circus going to do
without a proper tamer?
The animals may misconstrue
and act in ways that shame her,
The lyin’ troupe of balance men
may fall from their tightropes
They’ve shown us all, time and again
they all walk slipp’ry slopes
And need I mention ‘bout the leader,
of this fine brass band?
He’s known to be an avid tweeter –
with freedom out-of-hand!
It is the latest show on earth
and one that’s just not fair
and might I add, for all it’s worth,
each day’s a new nightmare!

© 2017 Joy A. Burki-Watson

Image Source

“You could make a case the Ringling circus isn’t fading away. It’s simply changing costumes and setting up shop in the biggest tent of all.”

One circus closes and another comes to Washington
Ruth, Tampa Bay Times, Opinion

While the ground of Democracy shook

Republicans on a pivotal House committee scored an initial triumph in their effort to scuttle former President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul, using a predawn vote Thursday to abolish the tax penalty his statute imposes on people who don’t purchase insurance and reshaping how millions of Americans buy medical care.

A predawn vote just gave House Republicans an early victory in overhauling Obamacare
Associated Press, via Business Insider


 

While the ground of Democracy shook
the empowered Republicans took
their constituents’ vote
as a mandate to float
every dirty old trick in the book.

© Mary Boren, 2017


 

Now our country’s adrift and divided

While we were distracted by Trump, Republicans advanced these 9 terrifying bills
“With both houses of Congress solidly under Republican control, there’s little in the way to stop House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) from sending bills to President Trump’s desk that embody the most dangerous aspects of radical right-wing ideology.” -Resistance Report

 


 

Now our country’s adrift and divided
with its POTUS unfit and misguided.
Deconstruction’s the goal;
kill America’s soul!
with the vision that Bannon provided.

© Lily Beth Baker, 2017

With the vision that Bannon provided,
the pretending Decider decided
that the tantrums he tweets
are the media’s treats
until they’re completely blindsided.

© Susan E. Eckenrode, 2017