Lieutenant governor too eager to embrace tax bill

Lieutenant governor too eager to embrace tax bill

Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin, as a "guest writer" in the Nov. 24 Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, wrote a piece titled "Fix the tax code." While I have a lot of respect for Mr. Griffin compared to other politicians in office, I was amazed how he could praise the Trump tax bill now in the Senate as totally positive without pointing out its problems. He starts by talking about hearing from "hardworking" Arkansans about wages being "stagnant for too long." Yes, because the Republican Congress has refused to raise the minimum wage for years. The excuse they give is that it would hurt small businesses. But small-business owners would get a better, qualified worker who would stay on the job longer, too. It's Walmart, McDonalds and hundreds of other corporate businesses the GOP is really protecting. Their lobby in Congress is too powerful for politicians to stand up against and do the right thing: Raise the minimum wage.

Which brings us back to the Trump tax bill. According to Griffin, it's going to "reduce the overall burden on hardworking Americans." Let's look at that overconfident assertion. In the first few years, middle- and lower-income families will see some tax relief, but the tax cuts will gradually fall off and by 2027, middle-class Americans will pay more taxes than they did in 2016. Why? It is simple math. Republicans must find a way to pay for the huge cuts to the wealthiest and the biggest corporate tax cut in decades. Most cuts for middle- and lower-income wage earners will go away by 2025. But the things that won't go away, according to the Tax Policy Center, are the individual mandate repeal that will cause millions to lose health care insurance, a new inflation metric that continues to push people into higher tax brackets, and the corporate tax rate that will remain forever at 20 percent (down from 35 percent).

The argument that lowering the corporate tax rate will keep companies from moving oversees is also a total miscalculation. Most corporations have tax shelters in other countries. This will continue to happen and the loopholes the large corporations have been using for years have not been fixed by the Trump tax bill, which was one thing we have been hearing the Republicans say for a long time: "We need to fix the loopholes that corporations use to avoid paying their share of taxes." Well, they aren't fixing any loopholes; they are making them legal.

Finally, Mr. Griffin, using a common Republican tactic of reversing the truth, said that "some are already fighting to preserve the status quo." He meant they are fighting to make changes to the bill. That is because changes need to be made to the bill to assure that the wealthiest pay their fair share, that corporations don't get disproportionate advantages in tax cuts, and that millions don't lose their health insurance.

What this current bill does is insure that the "status quo" remains. The wealthiest get wealthier and the "hardworking Americans" get poorer.

Steven Trulock

Fayetteville

Commentary on 12/05/2017

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