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That’s because patriotism isn't
mostly about saluting the flag and standing during the national anthem.
It’s about taking a fair share of
the burden of keeping America going.
But the tax plan gives American
corporations a $2 trillion tax break, at a time when they’re enjoying record profits and stashing unprecedented amounts of cash in offshore tax shelters.
And it gives America’s wealthiest
citizens trillions more, when the richest 1 percent now hold a record 38.6 percent of the nation’s total wealth, up
from 33.7 percent a decade ago.
A few Republicans are starting to
admit this. Last week, Gary Cohn, Trump’s lead economic advisor, conceded in an interview that “the most excited group
out there are big CEOs, about our tax plan.”
Republican Rep. Chris Collins admitted that “my donors are basically saying,
‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again.’”
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham warned that if Republicans failed to pass tax
reform, “the financial contributions will stop.”
Republican mega-donors view the tax
payback as they do any other investment. When they bankrolled Trump and the
GOP, they expected a good return.
The biggest likely beneficiaries are
busily investing an additional $43 million to pressure specific members of
Congress to pass it, according to The Wall Street Journal.
They include the 45Committee,
founded by billionaire casino oligarch Sheldon Adelson and Joe Ricketts, owner
of the Chicago Cubs; and the Koch Brothers’ groups, Americans for Prosperity
and Freedom Partners.
They’re not doing this out of love
of America. They’re doing it out of love of money.
How do you think they got so wealthy
in the first place?
As more of the nation’s wealth has
shifted to the top over the past three decades, major recipients have poured
some of it into politics – buying themselves tax cuts, special subsidies,
bailouts, lenient antitrust enforcement, favorable bankruptcy rules, extended
intellectual property protection, and other laws that add to their wealth.
All of which have given them more
clout to get additional legal changes that enlarge their wealth even more.
Forty years ago, the estate tax was
paid by 139,000 estates, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. By
2000, it was paid by 52,000. This year it will be paid by just 5,500 estates.
Under the House tax plan, it will be eliminated altogether.
Why do Americans pay more for
pharmaceuticals than the citizens of every other advanced economy? Because Big
Pharma has altered the laws in its favor.
Why do we pay more for internet
service than most other nations? Big cable’s political clout.
Why can payday lenders get away with
payday robbery? The political heft of big banks.
Multiply these examples across the
economy and you get a huge hidden upward redistribution from the paychecks of
average working people and the poor to top executives and investors. (I explain
this in detail in the documentary “Saving Capitalism,” airing next week on
Netflix.)
All this is terrible for the
American economy.
More and better jobs depend on increasing
demand for goods and services. This must come from the middle class and poor
because the rich spend a far smaller share of their after-tax income.
Yet the middle class and poor have
steadily lost purchasing power. Partly as a result, a relatively low share of
the nation’s working-age population is employed today and the wages of the
typical worker have been stuck in the mud.
The Republican tax plan will make
all this worse by burdening the middle class and the poor even more.
A slew of analyses, including Congress’s own Joint Committee on
Taxation, show that the GOP plan will raise taxes on many middle-class
families.
It will also require cuts in
government programs that middle and lower-income Americans depend on, such as
Medicare and Medicaid.
And the plan will almost certainly
explode the national debt, eventually causing many middle class and poor
families to pay higher interest on their auto loans, mortgages, and credit
cards.
I don’t care whether the top
executives of big corporations, Wall Street moguls, and heirs to vast fortunes
salute the flag and stand for the national anthem.
But they enjoy all the advantages of
being American. Most couldn’t have got to where they are in any other
country.
They have a patriotic duty to take
on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going. And Trump and his
enablers in Congress have a patriotic responsibility to make them.
ROBERT
B. REICH is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of
California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing
Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for
which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries
of the twentieth century. He has written fourteen books, including the best
sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and "Beyond
Outrage," and, his most recent, "Saving Capitalism." He is also
a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause,
a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the
award-winning documentary, INEQUALITY FOR ALL.