24 hours after Senate Republicans added repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate to their tax plan – in order to finance corporate tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans – economic experts are making clear that this would have devastating costs for the middle class.
To permanently cut taxes for big business, Senate Republicans would take healthcare coverage from 13 million Americans, send health insurance markets into chaos, and cause premiums to skyrocket across the board.
On top of these new medical and financial burdens for hardworking Americans, former Obama Administration economic adviser David Kamin explains that, in 2027, $30 billion of corporate tax cuts would be paid for by raising taxes on everyone EXCEPT the richest 1% of Americans.
This comes as Republican Senators are openly admitting that they are rushing to pass this tax bill to please big money donors.
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities Senior Fellow Aviva Aron-Dine, 11/15/2017: “The benefits of corporate rate cuts go overwhelmingly to high-income households….These tradeoffs are now even clearer: 13 million Americans would become uninsured to finance tax cuts of nearly $100,000 for those at the very top of the income scale.”
Howard Gleckman, Tax Policy Center, 11/15/2017: “The law would morph into a tax increase for those who pay the individual income tax plus a permanent tax cut for corporations….Oh, and it would also fracture one of the foundations of the Affordable Care Act’s individual marketplace by ending the tax penalty for individuals without health insurance, potentially leaving up to 13 million more Americans uninsured while increasing federal revenue by $318 billion over 10 years.”
New York University Law Professor and Former Obama White House Economic Adviser David Kamin, 11/15/2017: “…what remains is a permanent corporate tax rate cut paid for with a number of business tax raisers and then two large offsets that, in combination, affect almost every low- and middle-income family. Specifically, as of 2027, the chained CPI (an alternative inflation measure that slows down cost of living adjustments in the tax code) would remain in place, raising about $30 billion according to the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), and the repeal of the individual mandate from the Affordable Care Act would raise an additional $50 billion.”