Senate GOP Tax Bill Hurts Poor More than First Thought

The Congressional Budget Office ("CBO") has further analyzed the GOP Senate tax proposal and surprise, surprise - well, actually not surprising at all - the impact of the bill would hurt the poor more than originally believed.  Sadly, the bill is typical of the Republican Party's reverse Robin Hood agenda of taking from the poor and middle class and giving lavish tax cuts to the wealthy.  So much for Orrin Hatch's disingenuous lie that he works to benefit the poor and working class.  His rant at Sen. Sherrod Brown is definitely an example of he doth protest too much.  Here at the holiday season, the GOP is showing that its claimed deference to "Christian values" is nothing more than a charade. Indeed, Republicans like Hatch are little more than self-laudatory modern day Pharisees. A piece in the Washington Post looks at the new CBO analysis and its unsurprising consequences.  Here are article highlights:

The Senate Republican tax plan gives substantial tax cuts and benefits to Americans earning more than $100,000 a year, while the nation’s poorest would be worse off, according to a report released Sunday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Republicans are aiming to have the full Senate vote on the tax plan as early as this week, but the new CBO analysis showing large, harmful effects on the poor may complicate those plans. The CBO also said the bill would add $1.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, a potential problem for Republican lawmakers worried about America’s growing debt.

Democrats have repeatedly slammed the bill as a giveaway to the rich at the expense of the poor. In addition to lowering taxes for businesses and many individuals, the Senate bill also makes a major change to health insurance that the CBO projects would have a harsh impact on lower-income families.

By 2019, Americans earning less than $30,000 a year would be worse off under the Senate bill, CBO found. By 2021, Americans earning $40,000 or less would be net losers, and by 2027, most people earning less than $75,000 a year would be worse off. On the flip side, millionaires and those earning $100,000 to $500,000 would be big beneficiaries, according to the CBO’s calculations.

The main reason the poor get hit so hard in the Senate GOP bill is because the poor would receive less government aid for health care.

The CBO has calculated that health insurance premiums would rise if this bill becomes law, leading 4 million Americans to lose health insurance by 2019 and 13 million to lose insurance by 2027.

The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), the other official nonpartisan group that analyzes tax bills, put out a similar report showing how lower-income families are hurt by the loss of the health-care tax credits. But the CBO goes a step further than the JCT. The CBO also calculates what would happen to Medicaid, Medicare and the Basic Health Program if the Senate GOP plan became law. The CBO is showing even worse impacts on poor families than the JCT did.

Republicans, including Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), have argued that their bill helps Americans across the income spectrum. . . .  They also argue that lower-income families are not losing any money in their wallets.

But Democrats and advocates for the poor say these lower-income Americans are going to be worse off if they no longer have health insurance.

Nowadays, like the Christofascists who dominate the GOP base, if a Republican elected official's lips are moving, the safest assumption to make is that they are lying.  The biggest irony is that evangelical Christians who park their sanctimonious asses in church pews each week are the ones most loyal to the GOP which pushes policies that are the antithesis of Christ's social gospel message.   It is long past time that the media stop giving these people deference and maintaining the myth that they are decent people. 

Congressional Budget Office - Trumpcare Would Leave 23 Million Without Insurance

Remember all the bloviating by Paul Ryan and a host of other Republicans - including Der Trumpenführer about how the American Health Care Act, a/k/a Trumpcare or Ryancare depending on your inclination to lay blame, would lower costs and expand coverage?  Well, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office scoring released today underscores the magnitude of the lies uttered by these individuals.  The CBO says that Trumpcare would cause 23 million Americans to lose healthcare coverage.  As for the promise of lower premium costs and "quality coverage," that too is a lie.   Older Americans in particular would be severely hard hit as would those with seriosus healthcare issues. Indeed, a senior advisor at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said that the major takeaway from the CBO score is that Republicans’ talking points simply do not hold up.  That is a polite way of saying that Republicans are lying.  For Republicans, apparently the Commandment against lying has been excised from the Ten Commandments.  Candidly, the only beneficiaries of Trumpcare are the wealthy who would enjoy a huge tax break.  First these excerpts from the New York Times: 

A bill to dismantle the Affordable Care Act that narrowly passed the House this month would increase the projected number of people without health insurance by 14 million next year and by 23 million in 2026, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. That 10-year figure is slightly less than originally estimated.

It would reduce the federal deficit by $119 billion over a decade, less than the $150 billion in savings projected in late March for an earlier version of the bill. And in states that seek waivers from rules mandating essential health coverage, the new law could make insurance economically out of reach for some sick consumers.

“Premiums would vary significantly according to health status and the types of benefits provided, and less healthy people would face extremely high premiums,” the budget office concluded.

The new forecast of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Capitol Hill’s official scorekeeper, is another blow to Republican efforts to undo President Barack Obama’s signature domestic achievement. The Senate has already said it will make substantial changes to the measure passed by the House, but even Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, is sounding uncertain about his chances of finding a majority to repeal and replace the health law.

The report provided fresh ammunition for Democrats trying to kill the repeal bill, which they have derided as “Trumpcare.”

Democrats say much of that instability [of the Affordable Health Care Act] stems from Republican efforts to repeal and undermine the Affordable Care Act. The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer of New York, harshly criticized House Republicans for voting on their revised repeal measure without an updated analysis from the budget office.

Under the House bill, states could opt out of certain provisions of the health care law, including one that requires insurers to provide a minimum set of health benefits and another that prohibits them from charging higher premiums based on a person’s health status.

Think Progress was even more unkind.  Here are highlights:

 Jacob Leibenluft, senior advisor at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said that the major takeaway from the CBO score is that Republicans’ talking points don’t hold up. AHCA supporters still claim that the waivers wouldn’t harm anyone who needed essential health benefits or anyone with preexisting conditions, but this bill doesn’t bear that out.

“What the changes of bills have effectively done is resulted in system where sicker and older people are even worse off in terms of how much they would pay and quality of insurance coverage they would get.” Leibenluft said. Those changes would do little to boost overall coverage numbers, either.

“I think what that points to is how deeply unfixable the basic structure is. The problem is they’re pursuing hundreds of billions in tax cuts in a bill that needs to reduce deficit and that requires deep cuts to health coverage. And it’s not possible to undo those cuts to coverage while maintaining that basic structure.”