It’s possible that Speaker Paul Ryan could persuade House Republicans, who have passed their own screw-the-most-vulnerable-Americans tax bill, to give it up and approve word-for-word the dreadful bill passed by a bare majority of the Senate in the wee hours of Saturday morning.
But this would depend on getting the three dozen or so crazies in the House Freedom Caucus to go along. You can be certain that all or most of these extremists don’t think the Senate tax bill goes far enough, as Minority Leader Chuck Schumer noted, in “swindling” middle-class Americans and damaging lives by zapping programs designed for people who haven’t made it into the middle class.
This being so, it’s inevitable that—as House aides unanimously say—a Senate-House conference committee will have to work out the differences in the two bills. Just maybe that could undo all the cajoling and horse-trading work that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did to get those 51 votes on board.
Knocking off a couple of Republican votes from the conference bill that emerges is a longshot, to be sure. But, as TrueBlueMajority has written in her call-to-arms post, the resistance still has an opening, however narrow, to stop this monstrosity from reaching Donald Trump’s desk.
About half the benefits of the Senate tax cut are slated to enrich 5 percent of household earners in the first year of the law, says the Tax Policy Center. A decade from now, 98 percent of multimillionaires will still be getting a tax cut, but only 27 percent of households making less than $75,000 will.
One of the ways the resistance can work to defeat this bill is by attaching personal stories to the plethora of disasters lurking in the bill as it now stands. And a good place to start is in our own back yards with our own personal stories.
So, what one or two items in the tax bill will hurt you or someone in your family the most? What might you have to give up financially to deal with these items? Every effort should be made in the time allowed us to transform these personal stories—and the stories of other citizens and residents of the United States—into crisp soundbites with viral potential.
One way to weaponize these personal stories is to tie them directly to the vote of specific senators (or representatives who voted for the House version). And to tie the personal damage that will be caused to the special privileges given the wealthy in the bill.
Push those stories on social media, talk radio, local newspapers, phone calls to politicians. Near the local office of senators who voted for the bill, maybe stand with a few friends with a message on Burma Shave-type picket-signs.
Such as:
Senator _________
pads his wallet
while ensuring
your finances
go down
the toilet
Call him today!
555-0000
Need a hint for your own story? In the tsunami of crap contained in the Senate bill that will harm tens of millions are these items:
• Increasing the deficit will force automatic cuts under the Pay-As-You Go Act in a huge range of programs. On example: In the current fiscal year ending next Sept. 30, Medicare will lose $25 billion. Between now and by 2027, $400 billion in Medicare cuts. The likely immediate result? A doubling of the number of Medicare recipients who cannot get cancer treatment.
• The deduction for medical expenses in the House bill is going away, which will hurt millions of people weighed down by catastrophic medical bills that have driven so many into debt or bankruptcy. The financial damage will especially hurt people with chronic conditions and/or disabilities. The Senate bill keeps this deduction.
• Under the bill, currently tax-exempt tuition waivers for graduate students will become taxable income. This added financial burden means dropping out of school for tens of thousands of graduate students.
• While the bill makes private school tuition deductible, student loan interest for college is taxable.
• Reducing the pace of cost-of-living adjustments to Social Security obviously means less income for millions of elders who have no other money coming in.
• The estate tax exemption is doubled, to $11 million for a single taxpayer and $22 million for married taxpayers.
• The individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act disappears, and that, experts say, means about 13 million people will likely give up their health insurance. Premiums for people who still buy insurance will rise.
Do you have a story about how the tax bill will personally hurt you and yours? Tell us.