New York Times, Trump’s Big Bill Would Be More Regressive Than Any Major Law in Decades:
The Republican megabill now before the Senate cuts taxes for high earners and reduces benefits for the poor. If it’s enacted, that combination would make it more regressive than any major tax or entitlement law in decades.
The bill as passed by the House in May would raise after-tax incomes for the highest-earning 10 percent of American households on average by 2.3 percent a year over the next decade, while lowering incomes for the poorest tenth by 3.9 percent, according to new estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.
The shape of that distribution is rare: Tax cut packages have seldom left the poor significantly worse off. And bills that cut the safety net usually haven’t also included benefits for the rich. By inverting those precedents, congressional Republicans have created a bill unlike anything Washington has produced since deficit fears began to loom large in the 1990s.
“I’ve never seen anything that simultaneously really goes after poor people and then really helps rich people,” said Chuck Marr, the vice president for federal tax policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. …
“This bill definitely compromises too much on growth, and it doesn’t make smart use of tax cuts either,” said Erica York, vice president for federal tax policy at the Tax Foundation, a research group that generally favors lower taxes. “If you look at the revenue cost, it’s really large. If you look at the economic impact, it’s not that meaningful.”
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