[V]ermont’s three members of Congress panned a tax reform plan that the U.S. House passed Thursday, with Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy calling it a “hodgepodge collection of broken promises to middle-class Americans.”
Leahy, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., complained that the Republican-crafted package would result in 13 million Americans losing health insurance and give tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy, while much or all of the middle class would pay more.
“Republican leaders and President Trump promised to close loopholes for large corporations and the wealthiest Americans to pay for lowering their tax rates,” Leahy said in a statement. “Instead, their tax rates would be cut, and the loopholes remain, meaning even lower effective tax rates for the wealthy, while exploding the federal debt.”
Sanders, an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, said in a statement, “It is disappointing, but not surprising, that the House Republicans just voted to give the Koch brothers and other billionaire campaign contributors a massive tax break. Under the House bill, the top 1 percent would get half of the tax benefits, while nearly half of middle-class families would see their taxes go up.”
The tax reform package, a key goal of President Donald Trump, is expected to have final details worked out in a House-Senate conference committee. But its next stop is the Senate, which Sanders said has been drafting an “even worse” version of the bill.
“It would raise taxes on all middle-class families making $75,000 or less by the end of the decade in order to provide permanent tax relief to profitable corporations that shift American jobs to China and American profits to the Cayman Islands,” Sanders said.
He also said it would “throw 13 million Americans off of health insurance” while raising premiums for others and cutting Medicaid by $179 billion.
Welch said the House version “gives a tax break to the wealthiest Americans and pays for it by adding a whopping $1.5 trillion to the nation’s credit card.”
