Rubio tweak doesn’t rescue tax bill.

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How bad is the Republican tax bill? So bad that Sen. Marco Rubio had to beg for crumbs that would go to middle- and lowerincome Americans.

Rubio wanted a larger increase in the child tax credit. He wanted more of the credit to be refundable against payroll taxes — Social Security and Medicare — and not just income taxes. People who earn less pay proportionately more in payroll taxes.

House and Senate negotiators said Friday that they had addressed Rubio’s concerns in the conference committee bill. Rubio confirmed that a small increase in the refundable amount secured his vote.

So Rubio caved, predictably. His request, however, underscored yet again that this tax plan is a budget-busting redistribution of wealth to the wealthy.

Helping the working poor more supposedly would have pushed the legislation’s cost too high for the Senate to pass it by a simple majority. Yet Republicans found enough money to lower the top income-tax rate from 39.7 percent to 37 percent.

GOP negotiators also were able to please their business donors. The compromise bill would lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. President Trump and the House had wanted 20 percent, but the cut would kick in next year. The Senate bill had delayed the decrease until 2019.

Wealthier Americans would benefit in other ways. Business income would be taxed at a more favorable level than wage income. Most Americans are wage earners. Pass-through companies, which produce most of the country’s business income and which the wealthy use at a much higher rate, would get a new tax break. President Trump owns many such companies, which rebuts his claim that the legislation wouldn’t help him personally.

The final version would preserve some help for the less affluent. Americans still could deduct out-of-pocket medical expenses and interest payments on student loans. Graduate students wouldn’t pay taxes on tuition waivers.

Sicker Americans who buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act exchange, however, get kicked to the curb. The compromise bill includes the Senate’s repeal of the requirement that Americans buy health insurance.

With the requirement gone, healthier people will drop their coverage. Their departure will force up rates for sicker Americans who need coverage. When those without insurance do get sick — as some will — hospitals will have to eat the cost of caring for them.

Republicans have been trying to repeal the health care law for seven years. Having failed in straight-up votes, they seek to gut the law through this back-door ploy . ...

Republicans know how unpopular their legislation is. According to three new polls, roughly two-thirds of Americans believe the GOP tax plan would help the wealthy more than the middle class. Republicans don’t want to wait for credible analyses of the bill to support that skepticism . ...

Rubio, supposed champion of average folk, already has indicated where the GOP will go next. He told Politico that Congress must make “structural changes to Social Security and Medicare.” That means cutting benefits. Why? To reduce the deficit.

As we have noted, nearly half of all Floridians are poor or living paycheck-to-paycheck. Redistribution of wealth upward would hurt Florida.

Despite the concessions he supposedly received, when Marco Rubio votes for the Republican tax bill, he will be voting for his party, not his state.