The following article by Froma Harrop was posted on the Creators.com website November 23, 2017:
The story making the rounds is that the Republican tax plan targets homeowners only in expensive blue states — people who tend to vote for the other party. That’s only partly true. Homeowners everywhere would get hit. The reasons will follow.
As a whole, the “reforms” are an abomination. Through some tricks to hide its effects early on, the plan would move more of the nation’s tax burden down to the middle class and lower. Some 13 million could lose their health coverage.
Worst of all, the GOP tax plan would cost between $1.5 trillion and $2.2 trillion over 10 years. As a result, the national debt would explode to 123 percent (!!!) of the gross domestic product by 2037 — that is, unless Republicans were to raid Social Security and Medicare. Continue reading “GOP Tax Plan Would Hurt Homeowners Everywhere”
The following article by Damian Paletta was posted on the Washington Post website November 22, 2017:
Director of the Office of Management and Budget Mick Mulvaney during an Oval Office meeting on Oct. 19. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Congressional Republicans have implanted nearly 50 expiring provisions in their tax-cut bills that, if left unaddressed, would transform what Republicans promised would be middle-class tax relief into a law that raises taxes for tens of millions of Americans.
More than 80 percent of the tax breaks set to go away would be taken from households. The perks for corporations are generally permanent, including the biggest single benefit in the bill: a permanent reduction of the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent.
Democrats have accused the GOP of offering only illusory benefits for families, but White House and Republican leaders in recent days have repeatedly insisted that lawmakers in future sessions of Congress would extend the cuts or make them permanent. Future lawmakers, they argue, would be unwilling to let large-scale tax increases targeting the middle class take effect. Continue reading “Expiring provisions threaten to upend promised tax relief”
The following article by Alan Rappeport was posted on the New York Times website November 22, 2017:
n Oregon, which has one of the highest state income tax rates in the country, roughly 30 percent of taxpayers would see their federal tax bills increase if the tax bill moving through Congress repeals the state and local tax deduction. Credit Amanda Lucier for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Since getting crushed by the recession a decade ago, the state of Oregon has been on an economic upswing. The jobless rate has dipped below 4 percent from a high of 12 percent in 2009, home values are up and people are flocking to the state.
Net migration accounted for roughly 88 percent of Oregon’s population growth between 2016 and 2017, according to a Portland State University study.
But state officials worry that all the economic progress is about to be undercut by the $1.5 trillion Republican tax plan sailing through Congress. While lawmakers say the plan will boost growth and strengthen the economy, Oregon officials say the bill could have the opposite effect by making the state a less affordable place to live and putting a squeeze on state and local budgets. Continue reading “States Warn of Budget Crunch Under Republican Tax Plan”
The following article by Tory Newmyer was posted on the Washington Post website November 22, 2017:
President Donald Trump talks to reporters Tuesday before departing with his family to Mar-a-Lago for Thanksgiving. Credit: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post
Here’s one way to tell whether a tax code rewrite is headed in the right direction: Corporate lobbyists should be whining that their private breaks are getting squeezed too hard, and economists should be cheering because the trashing of those preferences is paying for lower overall rates that could fuel new growth.
Neither of those things is happening. And the Republican push to overhaul the code is far enough along that it’s raising alarms from economists across the country. The latest came Tuesday, when only one of 42 top economists surveyed by the Initiative on Global Markets at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business thought the tax proposals moving through Congress would meaningfully expand the economy over a decade (22 disagreed or strongly disagreed, 15 were uncertain and the rest didn’t answer). And none of those economists, a sampling spanning the ideological spectrum, disagreed the measures would leave the nation saddled with a substantially heavier debt load relative to the size of the economy. Continue reading “The Finance 202: There is something very strange about the GOP tax plan”
The following article by LaShawn Warren was posted on the Center for American Progress website November 22, 2017:
The U.S. Capitol dome as the sun rises on Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017, at the foot of the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington. Credit: AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta
President Donald Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), and many other GOP lawmakers have continually referenced faith and religion when referring to public policy. President Trump’s public remarks have increasing been laced with religious rhetoric—from invoking the Lord to support his declaration of opioid addiction as a national health emergency to his appeal to God to bless the world after launching military strikes in Syria. Similarly, when a policy crisis on gun violence reemerged in the wake of the Sutherland Springs, Texas, massacre, Speaker Ryan immediately reverted to religious rituals urging prayer for the community, but stopping short of a call for legislation to address gun violence—something he is well positioned to do.
Public facing piety and religious references from President Trump and GOP lawmakers in Congress are increasingly difficult to square with their public policy decisions. The tax reform legislation is one of the most glaring examples. Their aggressive legislative efforts to take from the least to give to corporations and people with the most are morally and ethically indefensible. In fact, these efforts are antithetical to the social teachings of Christianity and many other faith traditions that encourage courageous compassion and emphasize the responsibility to reject greed and give in service of the common good. The tax legislation is a profound illustration of the disconnect between a professed faith identity and actions that are inconsistent with the fundamental tenants of faith traditions. Continue reading “5 Reasons Communities of Faith Should Be Alarmed by the Tax Bill”
The following article by Nancy Altman and Linda Benesch was posted on the AlterNet website November 20, 2017:
Credit: www.speaker.gov/blog
Do you trust Paul Ryan to protect your Medicare benefits? How about White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, a former member of the House Freedom Caucus, and like Ryan, a longstanding foe of Medicare?
If the just-passed House tax bill, its Senate counterpart or some compromise of the two is signed into law, the enactment will put Medicare’s future in the hands of Ryan and Mulvaney.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the GOP tax bill will instantly trigger $400 billion in automatic cuts to Medicare in the next 10 years, including $25 billion in the first year after enactment alone.
The following article by Alan Cohen and Sam Berger was posted on the Center for American Progress website November 21, 2017:
The U.S. flag flies in front of the Capitol Dome, May 2017. Credit: AP/Susan Walsh.
The Senate is rushing forward with a tax bill that would primarily benefit corporations and the wealthy. Recent changes to the bill will result in middle-class tax increases; virtually everyone will see an increase in their individual income taxes in 2027. But these are not the only negative effects of the bill. Thanks to a little-known law, the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) Act, the Senate tax bill would automatically result in the complete elimination of many important programs.
Republicans are seeking to roll back a tax credit for drugs that treat rare diseases, alarming patient groups who fear the move would slow the development of new treatments.
The so-called orphan drug tax credit would be repealed in the tax-reform bill that passed the House last week. Patient groups are lobbying to preserve the credit, as are some drug companies.
The credit, first enacted in 1983, is intended to spur the development of treatments for rare, or “orphan,” diseases that affect fewer than 200,000 people. Patient groups fear that without the tax credit for 50 percent of the costs of research and testing, drug companies will cut back on developing drugs for rare diseases and focus on more common ailments.
“The Orphan Drug Tax Credit gives hope to the nearly 95 percent of individuals with rare diseases without a treatment that one day they too will have a treatment, or even cure,” more than 200 patient groups wrote in a letter to congressional leadership this month. “We cannot afford to move backwards.”
If the credit is rolled back, “we think we’re going to see a slowdown in the number of approved therapies,” said Peter Saltonstall, president of the National Organization for Rare Disorders, which is leading the charge to keep the tax credit.
The group points to a study it commissioned from Ernst and Young in 2015 that found that without the credit, 33 percent fewer orphan drugs would have been developed over the last 30 years.
Eliminating the tax credit would save the government a projected $54 billion over the next decade. Congressional Republicans are using that revenue to help pay for tax cuts.
A spokesperson for Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee argued that the corporate tax cuts in the legislation would allow drug companies to invest more in research.
“The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act recognizes the importance of medical innovation and competition in helping more Americans access lifesaving treatments,” the spokesperson said. “The bill preserves the R&D credit and lowers the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent — so pharmaceutical manufacturers can invest more of what they earn in new solutions for patients.”
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, noted that the Senate’s tax-reform bill does not completely eliminate the orphan drug credit. Instead, it reduces it from 50 percent to 27.5 percent.
“We’re talking about drugs for cancer kids,” Roberts said at a Finance Committee session on Thursday. “The House completely repealed the orphan drug credit. We took care of a limitation and then restored at least a 27.5 percent credit.”
Still, patient groups are concerned with the Senate bill, saying it would still be a significant cut. Advocates have also noted that Sen. Orrin Hatch(R-Utah), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, was one of the primary sponsors of the Orphan Drug Act in 1983.
“Chairman Hatch has been a strong advocate of this initiative, which is why the mark does not repeal the orphan drug tax credit, but rather makes modifications to it,” said a spokesperson for Senate Finance Committee Republicans. “However, as with any major reform, tough choices have to be made.”
The spokesperson said Hatch would continue working with lawmakers on the bill.
While some drug companies are pushing to restore the credit, the full lobbying weight of the industry has not been deployed on the issue. A pharmaceutical lobbyist said the tax credit is more of an issue for some smaller companies represented by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), rather than the large companies that tend to be in the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).
In a statement, BIO largely held its fire on the issue, praising the Senate for partially retaining the credit in its bill.
“We are pleased that the Senate retained the Orphan Drug Tax Credit and plan to continue working with both Chambers to preserve the credit,” a BIO spokesman said.
A PhRMA spokesperson said the group “encourage[s] policymakers to maintain incentivizes for the research and development of therapies to treat rare diseases in this process.”
The orphan drug tax credit is not universally beloved. Some on the left argue that drug companies abuse the credit by finding loopholes to claim it for drugs that are not really new treatments for rare diseases.
Steven Knievel, an access to medicines advocate at the advocacy group Public Citizen, argued that the orphan drug tax credit is a way for drug companies to “get goodies from the government without really doing what the intent of the law was.”
But instead of abolishing the tax credit, Knievel argued for exploring alternative ways to spur drug development, such as increased public funding of research at the National Institutes of Health.
The American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network, though, said the credit is a priority and that there are many variations of cancer that are classified as rare diseases.
“The overwhelming majority of the individual cancers themselves are classified as rare diseases,” said Mark Fleury, policy principal at the cancer society. “For us it hits really close to home.”
The following article by Andrew Siddons was posted on the Roll Call website November 21, 2017:
Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio leaves the Republican Senate policy lunch in the Capitol on Nov. 14. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call)
Deaths linked to alcohol are significantly more common than drug overdose deaths, but lawmakers may promote more drinking through a two-year tax break for producers of beer, wine and spirits as part of the Senate’s tax code overhaul.
The tax break, for 2018 and 2019, would save alcohol producers $4.2 billion, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. The provisions in the Senate Finance Committee’s tax plan were requested by Republican Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, but are based on a bill from Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the committee’s top Democrat.
Supporters of the tax break emphasize its benefits for small brewers, whom they tout as job creators. But public health experts who study the link between taxes and alcohol consumption think the economic impacts are overstated, especially since the underlying idea is for people to buy more alcohol. Continue reading “Lawmakers Push Alcohol Tax Cut Despite Rising Drinking Rates”
The following article by Damian Paletta was posted on the Washington Post website November 20, 2017:
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.). (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
The House Republican tax plan would add $1.3 trillion to the national debt over a decade, even after accounting for new economic growth from the bill, according to a nonpartisan study released Monday.
The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center is the third outside group to conclude that the bill would add to the deficit, contradicting Republicans’ claim that the bill would effectively pay for itself via a surge in economic growth.
The story making the rounds is that the Republican tax plan targets homeowners only in expensive blue states — people who tend to vote for the other party. That’s only partly true. Homeowners everywhere would get hit. The reasons will follow.
