MAGA update: Reward the rich, screw the rest

Diligently serving the little guy

since Jan. 21, 2025,

or maybe a lot longer than that

ProPublica reports about GOP thinking about cutting social safety net spending to pay for tax cuts for wealthy people and corporations, which are just humble people in need!: 

To Pay for Trump Tax Cuts, House GOP Floats Plan to 

Slash Benefits for the Poor and Working Class

A menu of options being circulated by congressional Republicans also includes new tax cuts for corporations and the ultrawealthy

In order to pay for the cuts, Republicans have started to eye some targets to raise money. Among them: cutting benefits for single mothers and poor people who rely on government health care.

The proposals are included in a menu of tax and spending cut options circulated this month by House Republicans. Whether or not Republicans enact any of the ideas remains to be seen. Some of the potential targets are popular tax breaks and cuts could be politically treacherous. And cutting taxes for the wealthy could risk damaging the populist image that Trump has cultivated.

For the ultrawealthy, the document floats eliminating the federal estate tax, at an estimated cost of $370 billion in revenue for the government over a decade. The tax, which charges a percentage of the value of a person’s fortune after they die, kicks in only for estates worth more than around $14 million.

Among those very few Americans who do get hit with the tax, nearly 30% of the tax is paid by the top 0.1% by income, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center think tank. (Many ultra-wealthy people already largely avoid the tax. Over the years, lawyers and accountants have devised ways to pass fortunes to heirs tax free, often by using complex trust structures, as ProPublica has previously reported.)

Another proposal aims to slash the top tax rate paid by corporations by almost a third.

In Trump’s first term, he brought the top corporate rate down from 35% to 21%, where it’s at now, taking the U.S. from a high rate compared to other OECD nations to about average. The proposed cut to 15% would make the United States’ rate among the lowest of such countries.

To pay for new tax cuts, the House Republicans’ proposal floats a series of potential overhauls of government programs. One major focus is possible cuts to Medicaid, the health care program for people with low incomes that is administered by the states. Medicaid expansion was a key tenet of the Affordable Care Act, passed under President Barack Obama. Many Republican governors initially chose not to take advantage of the new federal subsidies to expand the program. In the intervening years, several states reversed course, and the program has expanded the number of people enrolled in Medicaid by more than 20 million, as of last year.

Other proposals would eliminate tax breaks for families with children. Currently, parents can get a tax credit of up to $2,100 for child care expenses. The House Republican plan floats the elimination of that break. The cut is estimated to save $55 billion over a decade.

Another proposal in the list of options takes aim squarely at parents raising children on their own. The provision would eliminate the “head of household” filing status to collect almost $200 billion more in taxes over a decade from single parents and other adults caring for dependents on their own.

It must be so tempting for MAGA in power. There are just so many ways to transfer wealth and power from the people and the public interest to elite authoritarians. And it will all be justified by insulting lies and drivel like “tax cuts pay for themselves”, “the vast new wealth will gush down, and everyone will be prosperous and happy”, there will be an “investment boom”, and “federal debt will go down because tax revenues will skyrocket”!

Aw, that's adorable,

not deplorable!