Let's tear down that tomfoolery that any tax plan advocated by the GOP will benefit the middle class at the expense of the wealthy. Sure, there may be short-term relief used as bait for a few lower-income people, but somewhere in the near future there will be a clarion call by the deficit hawks that the deficit is growing too fast. And since revenue is limited, they will look for spending cuts.
Guess what? The programs targeted for these reductions will be Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs that primarily benefit the lower and middle classes. Republicans always believe that private industry, presumably run by Republican businessmen, can do better administering programs than the government. Accordingly, there will be a push for privatization of these programs, which they consider "welfare" for the lazy, undereducated and unproductive people generally. "Privatization" is a euphemism for profit at any cost.
The poor, disabled, the old and infirm and fixed-income retirees be damned.
And don't feed me that hokum about "trickle down" from the wealthy because I know when somebody is peeing on my boots and calling it rain. I can see hypocrisy once again rearing its ugly head and the GOP ideologues saying it is time to put country before party politics, and the lower and middle classes should bear a disproportionate cost to "make America great again."
Marshall Wade
Bella Vista
Editorial on 11/30/2017