Class warfare

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Here is Krugman:

The other day, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, admitted to The New York Times that he “misspoke” when he declared that his party’s tax plan wouldn’t raise taxes on any middle-class families. But he misspoke when he said “misspoke”: The proper term is “lied.” ... 

We’re still waiting for detailed analysis of the Senate bill, but the House bill doesn’t just raise taxes on many middle-class families: It selectively raises taxes on families with children. In fact, half — half! — of families with children will see a tax hike once the bill is fully phased in. Suppose that a child from a working-class family decides ... to attend college, probably taking out a loan to help pay tuition. Well, guess what: Under the House bill, that interest would no longer be deductible, substantially raising the cost of college. 

What if you’re working your way through school and your employer contributes toward your education expenses? The House bill would make that contribution taxable income. What if your parent is a university employee, and you get reduced tuition as a result? That tuition break becomes taxable income. So would tuition breaks for graduate students who work as teaching or research assistants. So what we’re looking at here are a variety of measures that will close off opportunities for children who weren’t clever enough to choose wealthy parents. 

Meanwhile, funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers more than eight million children, expired a month and a half ago— and so far, Republicans have made no serious effort to restore it. This is surely the shape of things to come: If tax cuts pass, and the deficit explodes, the G.O.P. will suddenly decide that deficits matter again and will demand cuts in social programs, many of which benefit lower-income children. 

So this isn’t just ordinary class warfare; it’s class warfare aimed at perpetuating inequality into the next generation. Taken together, the elements of both the House and the Senate bills amount to a more or less systematic attempt to lavish benefits on the children of the ultra-wealthy while making it harder for less fortunate young people to achieve upward social mobility. Or to put it differently, the tax legislation Republicans are trying to ram through Congress with indecent haste, without hearings or time for any kind of serious study, looks an awful lot like an attempt not simply to reinforce plutocracy, but to entrench a hereditary plutocracy.

Republican Class Warfare: The Next Generation, by Paul Krugman

Consider also this:

• Abolishing the individual mandate, leading to 13M people without healthcare insurance, a 10% increase in premiums and increased cost of emergency rooms. Creating hundreds, perhaps thousands of avoidable deaths, increased medical debts and bankruptcies in the process.
  
• Abolishing the estate tax (which starts at $5M+ for individuals and $10M+ for couples, so it's really not for the small businesses and farmers conservatives claim it is) perpetuating inherited wealth.
  

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It goes without saying that unions are the mortal class enemy of these right-wingers.. This has dire consequences:

In the six years since Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signed the union-busting Act 10, which curtailed collective bargaining rights for public employees, the state’s labor movement has been decimated. Wisconsin was once a leader in organized labor, but its share of workers belonging to unions plummeted from 14.2 percent in 2010 to 8.1 percent in 2016. In 2015, the state’s unionization rate dropped below the national average for the first time. Now a new study highlights the unintended consequences of Act 10, which has proven catastrophic for Wisconsin’s public schools.
As I explained in the March/April issue of Mother Jones, Wisconsin’s attack on public sector unions has created a shortage of public school teachers, as teachers retire and look for jobs in other states and fewer young people embark on careers in education:

The school of education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison never used to have trouble attracting applicants with dreams of becoming teachers. Its graduate program is ranked fourth in the country by U.S. News & World Report, and until recently, its undergraduate program in elementary education typically received between 300 and 400 applications for its 125 spots. Now, says Michael Apple, a professor in the program, it only gets about one applicant per opening.

This Is Just How Badly Scott Walker Has Decimated Public Schools in Wisconsin – Mother Jones

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Amazing stuff..

During the Senate debate over the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Senator Orrin Hatch was challenged over support for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers nine million U.S. children — but whose funding lapsed two months ago... Hatch ... insisted that “the reason CHIP’s having trouble is because we don’t have money anymore” — just before voting for a trillion-and-a-half-dollar tax cut that will deliver the bulk of its benefits to the richest few percent.... 

He then went on to say, “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything.” So who, exactly, was he talking about...? Was he talking about food stamps, most of whose beneficiaries are children, elderly or disabled? ... Was he talking about the earned-income tax credit, which rewards only those who work? Was he talking about Medicaid, which again mainly benefits children, the elderly and the disabled, plus people who work hard but whose jobs don’t provide health benefits? We can go on down the list. 

The simple fact is that big spending on people who “won’t lift a finger” doesn’t actually happen in America — only in Hatch’s meanspirited imagination. Now, to be fair..., some people ... get lots of money they didn’t lift a finger to earn — namely, inheritors of large estates. ...Republican legislation would give these people ... billions and billions of dollars... 

How can this be justified if it’s supposedly hard to find money for children’s health care? Well, Senator Chuck Grassley explained it all last week: “I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.” ... 

The important thing to realize, however, is that the hypocrisy and contempt for the public we’ve seen ... is just the beginning..., budget deficits are going to soar... And offsetting those deficits will require going after the true big-ticket programs, namely Medicare and Social Security. Oh, they’ll find euphemisms to describe what they’re doing, talking solemnly about the need for “entitlement reform” as an act of fiscal responsibility — while their huge budget-busting tax cut for the rich gets shoved down the memory hole. But whatever words they use to cloak the reality of the situation, Republicans have given their donors what they wanted — and now they’re coming for your benefits.

Republicans Are Coming for Your Benefits, by Paul Krugman, NY Times

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No comment necessary..

If the Senate Republican tax bill could talk, it would probably sound a lot like Chuck Grassley. During a week already rife with Republican skullduggery, the Iowa Senator did his best Scrooge impression while defending the recently passed legislation’s weakening of the estate tax:
“I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing,” Grassley told reporters last week. “As opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

The senator’s words were callous, elitist, and, worse still, completely inaccurate. In 2015, consumers with pre-tax incomes between $15,000 and $30,000 spent nearly eight-and-a-half times less on alcohol than consumers who made $200,000 or more, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics survey. Consumers that made between $50,000 and $70,000 still spent more than four times less on alcohol than those who made $200,000 or more. That same year, those wealthier consumers also outspent lower-income groups by quite a bit on entertainment (yes, that includes movies): about five times as much as those who made between $15,000 and $30,000 and more than three times as much as those making between $50,000 and $70,000.

What do lower- and middle-income American taxpayers spend most of their money on? Pretty much the same things as wealthy folks do: Housing, food, transportation, and health care, according to the BLS survey. Higher-income consumers obviously spend more on “booze” and “movies” because they make more, but Grassley chose to double down on the supposed prodigal spending among ordinary Americans. Senator Grassley, for his part, accepted more than $170,000 in campaign contributions in the 2016 election cycle from the purveyors of “Beer, Wine, and Liquor” and “TV/Movies/Music,” according to Open Secrets, a nonprofit that tracks political donations. The Senate bill, which Grassley played a large role in shaping, includes a $4.2 billion tax cut for alcohol producers.

Booze, Women, and Movies: Chuck Grassley Couldn’t Be More Wrong about Taxpayers