This headline appeared on
Monday, July 31, 2017, at precisely 4:00 am: “Koch
Brothers Move to Back White House’s Tax-Cut Plan.” This one appeared less
than twelve hours later: “White
House sees tax reform zipping through Congress in October, November.”
That’s what you get when you
combine the Kochs’ money and influence with Trump’s executive power and support
from the Republican base: a unified Republican Party marching in lockstep
toward a destructive goal.
The Kochs’ much-publicized
hostility toward Donald Trump has been replaced by a strategic
alliance between the ideologically extreme billionaire brothers and the
ideologically fluid but equally self-serving businessman/president. They have
reached “new-found
unity” around an issue that is guaranteed to excite all Republican
politicians; tax cuts that would benefit Trump, most members of his cabinet –
and, of course, the Koch brothers themselves.
They don’t call them “cuts,”
of course. That would sound crass. Instead, in time-worn Republican fashion,
they hide their selfishness behind a more refined word: “reform.”
“Social Security reform,”
“Medicare reform,” “tax reform” – when Republicans say they want to “reform”
something, the only thing you can be sure of is that the wealthy will benefit
and everyone else will suffer.
Longtime Koch operative Marc
Short was given a key role in the Trump White House. As Legislative
Director, Short works with Republicans in Congress to promote the passage of
Trump’s agenda – or, in this case, the Trump/Koch agenda.
When it comes to taxation, the
Kochs seem to be the senior partner in this relationship. Steve Bannon’s
proposal for a millionaire
tax increase was quickly shot down. So was House Speaker Paul Ryan’s
proposal for a “border
adjustment tax,” which the billionaires brothers strongly opposed.
What remained was a “reform”
plan any self-serving billionaire could love. Virtually all of the cuts – 99.6
percent of them – would go to the top 1 percent, according to Americans for Tax
Fairness, cutting approximately $1.5 trillion from Medicaid while giving
roughly $2 trillion in tax cuts to corporations. The House’s “reform” plan
would also cut nearly $500 billion from Medicare.
These cuts will make you sick
– perhaps literally. They would hurt millions of older Americans, including the
two-thirds of nursing home patients who rely on Medicaid for their care. Their
tax cuts would also be bad for the country’s economic health. As the experience
of recent years has confirmed, government spending cuts also slow economic
growth and increase the risk of recession.
Ready to Launch
Two Koch-backed groups,
Freedom Partners and Americans for Prosperity, sponsored an event on Monday to
advance the Koch/Trump/GOP tax cuts. Joining Short on the speaker’s list was
Trumps Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, the ruthless and unethical “foreclosure
king” and former Goldman Sachs partner. Mnuchin, although not quite a
billionaire himself, is very
wealthy and would benefit greatly from these tax cuts too.
Mnuchin peddled the usual GOP
snake-oil at the conference. “This is about creating jobs,” Mnuchin said, “this
is about creating wage growth, this is about a simpler and fairer tax system.”
That’s what they said after they passed the last round of millionaire and
billionaire tax cuts under George W. Bush. Wages stayed stagnant under Bush,
and job creation slowed dramatically even before the financial crisis of
2007-2008.
The Kochs’ “multi-million
dollar campaign” to promote tax cuts is just getting started. They are
running digital
ads and will hold another
tax cut event on Wednesday, August 2, featuring far-right “Freedom Caucus”
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC). Can they really get their agenda passed by November?
“So that, I think, is an aggressive schedule, but that is our timetable,” Short
told attendees at Monday’s event, adding: “I think we’re in for a long fall,
legislative calendar-wise.”
Americans may be in for a long
fall “health-wise” and “economy-wise,” too.
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