To watch this video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfHjzp0PxMI
You know the plot: The bank robbers set off a bomb down the street from the bank, and while everyone’s distracted they get away with the loot.
In the reality TV show we’re now suffering through, Donald Trump
is the bomb.
The robbers are the American oligarchs who bankroll the
Republican Party, and who are plotting the biggest heist in American history –
a massive tax cut estimated to be up to 5.8 trillion dollars.
Trump is busily distracting America with his explosive tweets
and incendiary tantrums – blasting Republican senators Jeff Flake and Bob
Corker, NFL players who take the knee, Dreamers, refugees, immigrants,
transgender people, the media, “rocket man,” Hillary Clinton, Obama, NAFTA,
Muslims.
The Trump bomb is hugely damaging – unleashing hate, threatening
democratic institutions, isolating America in the world.
But none of this seems to bother Republicans in Congress, except
for a handful of Senators who won’t be running again. That’s because
congressional Republicans are concentrating their efforts on pulling off the
giant heist for their rich patrons.
They want to move quickly so no one notices – passing the tax
cut before Christmas, with no hearings and minimal debate.
If the plot succeeds, most Americans will be robbed in three
ways.
First, they’ll lose tax deductions they rely on – such as the deduction on earnings they put into tax-deferred savings in 401k plans. Some 55 million Americans now rely on 401(k) plans to save for retirement.
They’ll also lose the deduction for what they pay in state and
local taxes. More than half of this deduction now goes to taxpayers with
incomes of less than $200,000.
Republicans say the middle class will come out just fine because
they’ll get a larger standard deduction. Not true. The average American’s tax
bill will rise because the deductions they’ll lose will total more than the
higher standard deduction Republicans are proposing.
Second, most Americans will lose government services that will
have to be eliminated in order to pay for the giant tax cut – including, very
likely, some Medicare and Medicaid.
About $1.5 billion in Medicare and Medicaid cuts were quietly
included in the budget resolution Republicans just passed, in order to get
their tax bill through the Senate with just 51 votes. (No one paid much
attention because Trump was attacking grieving combat widows.)
Third, most Americans will have to pay higher interest on their
car and mortgage loans and other money they borrow, because the huge tax cut
will explode the national debt.
That debt is now around $20 trillion, or 70 percent of the total
economy. If it goes much higher, it will crowd out borrowing and force interest
rates upward.
Putting all this together, the theft would be the largest
redistribution from the bottom 90 percent to the richest 1 percent in history.
Republican’s biggest fear is that word of the heist will leak
out to the public, and their tax bill will be defeated by a handful of Senate
Republican holdouts who feel the public pressure.
That’s exactly what happened with their plan to repeal the
Affordable Care Act. The GOP’s big-money patrons pushed for repeal not because
they had any principled objection to the Act, but because they didn’t want to
fork over $144 billion in taxes on incomes over $1 million to pay for the Act
over the next decade.
In the end, Republicans couldn’t get away with it because
Americans learned that more than 23 million people would lose their health
coverage, and Medicaid would also be on the chopping block.
Trump was willing to distract the public’s attention to
give congressional Republicans a shot at repeal, but the moment the public
started catching on he blew their cover. After the Congressional Budget
Office announced the consequences of the Republican health bill, Trump called
it “mean.”
He could do the same with the tax bill. He almost has. When word
leaked out last week that Republicans were planning to limit 401(k) deductions,
Trump tweeted that it wouldn’t happen (and then backtracked on his tweet).
The moneyed interests who run the GOP depend on the Trump bomb
to divert attention from their huge heist. Their challenge is to make sure the
bomb doesn’t go off in the wrong direction.
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.