It's a little late in the game, now that the Senate has passed its massive giveaway to corporations and the 1 percent in that social engineering project it calls tax "reform," but as of last week there's an official investigation into that mysterious Treasury Department analysis showing how great the bill would be for the economy.
The Treasury Department's inspector general is looking into whether politics is preventing Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin from releasing an analysis of the Republican tax proposal.
Mnuchin has said that under the GOP proposal, there would be so much economic growth it would pay for all the tax cuts, and he promised to be transparent, releasing a Treasury Department analysis of the bill. His message is at odds with an analysis released Thursday by the Joint Committee on Taxation, which found that over the next decade, the proposed bill would increase the federal budget deficit by $1 trillion, with growth factored in.
The inquiry was spurred by a letter from Sen. Elizabeth Warren to Treasury inspector general Eric Thorson. "Either the Treasury Department has used extensive taxpayer funds to conduct economic analyses that it refuses to release because those analyses would contradict the treasury secretary's claims," she wrote "or Secretary Mnuchin has grossly misled the public about the extent of the Treasury Department's analysis."
It might not be an either/or proposition here. It's entirely possible that Mnuchin is both a liar and an embarrassment to the Treasury Department. In fact, that seems pretty likely. What we already know about it from an anonymous economist at the Office of Tax Analysis is that the full analysis does not exist. Instead, they said, they've been doing analysis on the bits and pieces of it.
But it's entirely possible it's far more nefarious, that Mnuchin and Treasury know just how devastating this bill could be to the entire economy. Like, 1929, Great Depression devastating. If they have analysis showing that and haven't released it, allowing Republicans to jam it through, we have a right to know. Maybe we'll know that before the House and Senate get a conference bill done.
The Senate passed the worst GOP Tax Scam in history in the middle of the night, but it's NOT over. Call your members of the House or Senate TODAY at (202) 224-3121 and tell to do everything they can to stop this bill.