What Comes After Passing The Tax Bill Through The Senate
Dear Friends & Neighbors,
Visualization of how a bill becomes a law (attribution: Mike Wirth and Dr. Suzanne Cooper-Guasco, presented at WindermereSun.com)
Early this Saturday morning, the Senate passed the GOP tax bill, 51(Yea)-49(Nay), with Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn) being the only Republican senator voting against the bill and with Vice-President Mike Pence presiding over the chamber after a frantic rewrite. This extremely partisan tax bill will benefit big businesses and the wealthy, moving Trump closer to achieving his first major legislative victory. Several Democratic senators tweeted a photo of a page of the bill, received just hours before voting, with handwritten additions in the margin of this 497-page document, indicating how Republicans are rushing through this procedure. Because the House passed a different bill on Nov. 16, 2017, GOP leaders now must reconcile the two versions (please refer to the diagram above on “How Our Laws Are Made“) before the bill can be finalized and be placed on President Trump’s desk to be signed.
The significant changes brought by this bill:
- Elimination of the Obamacare Mandate
- Slashing the corporate tax from 35% to 20%
- Doubling standard deductions but abolishing all individual state and local income tax deductions
What it means: there may be possible big tax cut for people making more than $100,000 per year while increase in tax over the next ten years for people making less than $75,000 per year. The nonpartisan joint committee on taxation projected that this plan would add $1 trillion to the federal deficit over the next ten years (even after factoring in the economic growth the bill is projected to generate). The independent Tax Policy Center came to the similar conclusion, predicting that this Senate bill would add $1.2 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade after accounting for increased economic growth.
Below, Senator Elizabeth Warren explains who benefits from this tax bill and why Trickle Down Economics doesn’t work at the current tax rate (more accurately speaking, Trickle Down Economics only works when the tax rate is extremely high, such as income tax rate above 90%):
The House Speaker, Paul Ryan said, “For the first time since 1986, both the House and the Senate have passed a major overhaul of our nation”s tax code. Now we will move quickly to a conference committee so we can get a final bill to President Trump’s desk.”
The minority leader Senator Charles Schumer said, “There is no reason to rush through a tax break for millionaires and billionaires….”
The majority leader of the Senate Mitch McConnell said, “You complain about a process when you are losing….”
The minority whip from Illinois, Senator Dick Durbin said, “I defy any member of the Senate to stand here, take an oath that they have read this and understand what in the world it means to businesses and families and individuals.”
Below, are some reactions to this bill, from both sides:
Gathered, written, and posted by Windermere Sun-Susan Sun Nunamaker
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