Win at all costs will cost the

There are a lot of legitimate reasons — practical, fiscal, sociological, political, ideological — for a government to pass a piece of legislation. But “because we had to pass something” isn’t among them.

Still, the need for a major legislative win — of any sort whatsoever — that might reassure American voters looking ahead to next year’s midterm elections that the Trump administration’s agenda hasn’t gone completely off the rails seems to have been the primary motivating force behind congressional Republicans’ near-unanimous support of a hastily crafted tax-reform bill that could add trillions to the U.S. national debt.

Having failed earlier this year — despite controlling both houses of Congress and the White House — to bring about their longpromised repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act — a.k.a. Obamacare — Republicans needed something that would demonstrate that America’s vote-for-change endorsement of Donald Trump as president was not a colossal mistake.

Trump’s loudly trumpeted Mexican border wall has not materialized; his isolationist foreign policy strategies have diminished the U.S.’s status on the global stage and his domestic pandering to nationalist interests has solidified his standing with the alt-right base while driving his overall popularity numbers to historic lows.

Further, the ongoing investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election — allegedly with collusion by the Trump campaign — continues to cast an ever-lengthening shadow on the former reality star’s presidency.

With the president’s approval rating hovering abysmally in the mid-30s, percentagewise, Republicans are aware they’re in imminent danger of being dragged down with him — and that losing control of Congress in the 2018 midterms is a real possibility.

With that in mind, the GOP adopted a get-awin-at-all-costs attitude as it scrambled to force tax-reform legislation through both houses and onto Trump’s desk before Christmas.

But given that Trump’s run to the presidency was fuelled in large part by an appeal to blue-collar America and a pledge to “drain the swamp” of lobbyists, special interests and bigmoney influence in Washington, it’s hard to see how this tax reform will drive the Republicans’ effort to maintain legislative control beyond the 2018 midterms.

It is, by every measure, a bill that favours large corporations and America’s wealthiest citizens while tossing temporary tax-relief crumbs to the working class whose votes carried Trump to his current residence on