Tax cuts for rich, Medicare cuts for us

Last year, even before President Trump and congressional Republicans celebrated passage of massive corporate tax cuts, U.S. corporate profits after taxes stood at record highs, having almost quadrupled over the previous 20 years. But according to Republicans, corporate America needed and deserved more, more, ever more and more. So they got it.

And even before those tax cuts were signed into law, wealthy Americans were collecting a greater share of national income than at any time in roughly 130 years. Nonetheless, the tax cuts were designed to put additional billions into their bank accounts, their stock portfolios, their real estate holdings, their mansions and yachts.

Of course, other Americans also enjoyed a taste of the goodies. As House Speaker Paul Ryan tweeted out, forever cementing his status as a man close to the people:

“A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, PA, said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week ... she said [that] will more than cover her Costco membership for the year.”

Unfortunately, that extra $1.50 a week for the school secretary has done serious damage to the nation’s financial situation. When Trump took office, the nation’s annual deficit for fiscal 2018 was projected to be $487 billion. Instead it has soared to $779 billion. That’s in large part because revenue collected through corporate taxes has fallen by almost a third, while revenue from individual taxes — that you and I pay, that the likes of Jared Kushner do not pay — has increased slightly.

Of course, Republicans would never admit the true cause of these soaring deficits. Short of putting them into a Saudi embassy with someone armed with a bone saw, they would never ever admit that this huge deficit is caused by the very tax cuts that they have lauded as their primary accomplishment of the last two years.

Instead, in the words of Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, “This fiscal picture is a blunt warning to Congress of the dire consequences of irresponsible and unnecessary spending.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was even more specific. He called the rising deficit “very disturbing,” but dismissed tax cuts as a cause. Instead, he explained this week, “the real driver(s) of the debt, by any objective standard,” are Medicaid, Social Security and Medicare, the programs that provide health care and a degree of income security to hundreds of millions of Americans.

In fact, McConnell said, “I think the single biggest disappointment of my time in Congress has been our failure to address the entitlement issue.”

So there you have it. We are supposedly the richest, most prosperous country on the planet, yet somehow we can’t afford health care for our people. We can finance massive tax cuts to benefit corporations and the wealthiest 1 percent, who then fund GOP political campaigns with the crumbs off their tables, but income security for our seniors is “irresponsible and unnecessary spending.”

“If we can’t sell this to the people, we ought to go into another line of work,” McConnell said in December, referring to the tax cuts. I think he’s right. I think those who create massive deficits through tax cuts, then use those deficits to try to gut essential social programs, ought to be forced by voters into another line of work.

The midterms are the time to do it.