A top House Republican who helped craft the 2017 GOP tax law admitted this week that the “tax cuts may not pay for themselves.” That’s exactly the opposite of Senator Susan Collins's “claim that the tax bill will pay for itself” — and it comes as the federal deficit surged 42 percent from this time one year ago, according to new Treasury Department data. Experts believe the rising debt from the tax bill puts Medicare and Social Security at risk.
A recent Axios report also indicates that “wealthy people and corporations have so much money they literally don't know what to do with it” in part thanks to the Republican tax plan — at the same time that “American taxpayers paid over $90 billion more under Trump tax law.” While special interests overwhelmingly benefit, everybody else is getting the short end of the stick.
Despite all of this, Collins has doubled down on her support for the Republican tax law - even saying she “would support it again today.” As Collins votes with President Trump 94 percent of the time and aligns herself as a reliable vote for special interests, her support from Mainers has fallen: Collins’s approval is at an “all-time low” and has dropped “by 27 points over the last two years.”
Read more about how the Collins-backed tax law is spiking the deficit and benefitting special interests at Mainers’ expense:
Washington Post: GOP leader concedes tax cuts may not pay for themselves as 2019 deficit grows
- “Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), a lead architect of the GOP tax bill, suggested Tuesday the tax cuts may not fully pay for themselves, contradicting a promise Republicans made repeatedly while pushing the law in late 2017.”
- “The federal government’s deficit typically shrinks during strong economic times, but the deficit is up nearly 40 percent so far this fiscal year, according to the latest Congressional Budget Office report released Friday.”
- "'Revenue fell, it didn’t rise, after the tax cuts,' said Marc Goldwein, senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget."
- “Brady’s comments are a marked departure from the claim many Republicans made during the tax bill debate that the tax cuts would be fully paid for by additional economic growth that would, in turn, spur additional tax revenues for government coffers.”
The Hill: May deficit surges to $208 billion, 42% higher than last year
- “Treasury estimates that the full deficit will exceed $1 trillion by the time the fiscal year wraps up at the end of September.”
- “The deficit's precipitous rise follows the 2017 GOP tax act, which the Congressional Budget Office projected would add some $1.9 trillion to the debt over a decade, as well as bipartisan plans to increase spending on both the defense and domestic sides of the ledger.”
Axios: Too much money (and too few places to invest it)
- “the top 1% of earners and big companies are holding record levels of unused cash.”
- “large companies around the world are overwhelmingly and uniformly choosing not to reinvest much of it into their businesses. They're hoarding it in cash and buying back stock.”
- “the Trump tax cut ... slash[ed] the share of U.S. taxes that companies paid to its lowest level in at least half a century and provided companies even more capital forbuybacks, dividends and executive compensation.”
Yahoo Finance: American taxpayers paid over $90 billion more under Trump tax law
- “after the law took effect, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warned that more Americans would owe money to the IRS under the new law while those receiving refunds would decrease.”
- “as people filed, many bemoaned getting smaller-than-anticipated refunds or even being hit with a ‘surprise’ tax bill.”
- “Last year, big businesses paid $91 billion less in taxes than they had in 2017, prior to the new law’s passage.”
- “Those in the top 1% ... got an average tax cut of about $33,000” while “The lowest income households ... got an average tax cut of about $40.”