By Robert Reich
The Republican tax plan to be voted
on this week is likely to pass.
“The American people have waited 31
long years to see our broken tax code overhauled,” the leaders of the Koch’s
political network insisted in a letter to members of Congress, urging
swift approval, adding that the time had come to put “more money in the
pockets of American families.”
Please. The Koch network doesn’t care a fig about the pockets of
American families. It cares about the pockets of the Koch network.
It has poured money into almost every state in an effort
to convince Americans that the tax cut will be good for them. Yet most
Americans don’t believe it.
Polls shows only about a third of Americans favor the tax
plan. The vast majority feel it’s heavily skewed to the rich and big businesses
– which it is.
In counties that Trump won but Obama
carried in 2012, only 17 percent say they expect to pay less in taxes,
according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Another 25 percent
say they expected their family would actually pay higher taxes.
Most Americans know that the tax
plan is payback for major Republican donors. Gary Cohn, Trump’s lead
economic advisor, even conceded in an interview that “the most excited
group out there are big CEOs, about our tax plan.”
Republican Rep. Chris Collins admitted “my donors are basically saying, ‘Get it
done or don’t ever call me again.’”
Senator Lindsey Graham warned that if Republicans failed to pass the
tax plan, “the financial contributions will stop.”
By passing it, Republican donors
will save billions – paying a lower top tax rate, doubling the amount their
heirs can receive tax-free, and treating themselves as “pass-through”
businesses able to deduct 20 percent of their income (effectively allowing Trump to cut his tax rate in
half, if and when he pays taxes).
The biggest winners by far will be
American oligarchs such as the Koch brothers; Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley
investor; Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate; Woody Johnson,
owner of the New York Jets football team and heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune; and Carl Icahn, the
activist investor.
The oligarchs are the richest of the
richest 1 percent. They’ve poured hundreds of millions into the GOP and
Trump. About 40 percent of all contributions for the entire federal
election came from the richest 0.01 percent of the American population.
The giant tax cut has been their
core demand from the start. They also want to slash regulations, repeal the
Affordable Care Act, and cut everything else government does except for defense
– including Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
In return, they have agreed to
finance Trump and the GOP, and mount expensive public relations campaigns that
magnify their lies.
Trump has fulfilled his end of the
bargain. He’s blinded much of his white working-class base to the reality of
what’s happening by means of his racist, xenophobic rants and
policies.
The American oligarchs couldn’t care
less about what all this will cost America.
Within their gated estates and
private jets, they’re well insulated from the hatefulness and
divisiveness,
They don’t worry about whether
Social Security or Medicare will be there for them in their retirement because
they’ve put away huge fortunes.
Climate change doesn’t concern
them because their estates are fully insured against hurricanes, floods,
and wildfires.
They don’t care about public schools
because their families don’t attend them. They don’t care about public
transportation because they don’t use it. They don’t care about the poor
because they don’t see them.
They don’t worry about the rising
budget deficit because they borrow directly from global capital markets.
Truth to tell, they don’t even care
that much about America because their personal and financial interests are
global.
They are living in their own
separate society, and they want Congress and the President to represent them,
not the rest of us.
The Republican Party is their
vehicle. Fox News is their voice. Trump is their champion. The new tax
plan is their triumph.
But if polls showing most Americans
against the tax cut are any guide, that triumph may be short lived. Americans
are catching on.
The recent electoral results in
Virginia and Alabama offer further evidence.
A tidal wave of public loathing is
growing across the land – toward Trump, the GOP, and the oligarchs they serve;
and to the deception, the wealth, and the power that underlies them.
That wave could crash in the midterm
elections of 2018. If so, the current triumph of the oligarchs will be the
start of their undoing.
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.