I don’t need a tax cut

People like me in top tax brackets shouldn’t be enriched at the expense of the middle class

As House and Senate Republicans negotiate a final tax bill, they’ve made it perfectly clear for whom they’re working: wealthy corporations and the top 1 percent.

Pennsylvania’s Republican senator, Pat Toomey, is all-in, and every House Republican from Pennsylvania supports this scheme to take from middle-class families and give to the people who need it least — Reps. Mike Kelly, Scott Perry, Glenn Thompson, Ryan Costello, Pat Meehan, Brian Fitzpatrick, Bill Shuster, Tom Marino, Lou Barletta, Keith Rothfus, Charlie Dent and Lloyd Smucker.

I fear this terrible bill soon will become law if we all don’t speak out. When a final version is hammered out behind closed doors by Republican leaders of the House and Senate, I hope our representatives will stand up for those Pennsylvanias who do everything they can to support their families but are still falling behind.

As the former vice chair of a major Pennsylvania banking and financial institution, I spent a good portion of my career in Pennsylvania. I worked with many hardworking Pennsylvanians and saw the impact of vital child-care and early-childhood education programs in their communities. That’s why I’m so concerned about how the GOP tax bill would set back so many Pennsylvanians that I’ve grown to care about.

Indeed, this tax bill would not help the middle class and working families — despite Republican claims that it would. Their proposals actually would raise taxes on millions of people who can least afford it. They would raise taxes even on people in the lowest income brackets, on graduate students living on stipends and on seniors living on fixed incomes. All this, while making the wealthy wealthier and ballooning the deficit.

We wealthy people already don’t pay our fair share in taxes, which is why I signed a letter with more than 400 other highnet-worth folks telling Congress not to cut our taxes. Republicans didn’t listen; their plan gives wealthy people trillions in new tax breaks for doing nothing but being rich. My heirs would benefit from the repeal of the estate tax and increase their personal wealth while middle-class families would pay for it with higher taxes and cuts to programs they rely on, such as Medicaid.

House and Senate Republicans expect to vote on their tax bill this week. It would give wealthy Pennsylvanians in the top 1 percent an average tax cut of $7,040, while 1.6 million Pennsylvania households earning less than $148,000 would see an average tax increase of nearly $100 by 2027.

How would this affect you? I hope the people of Pennsylvania will tell their representatives to oppose any legislation that would cut taxes for the wealthy while hurting middle-class families.

Thebills passed by Republicans so far would drastically slash the corporate tax rate to 20 percent from 35 percent. The savings unquestionably would fall to the bottom line of corporations already earning record profits — and to their executives’ paychecks — while their employees’ wages would continue to stagnate. Republicans also expect to give a huge tax cut to multinational corporations, which surely will exacerbate the offshoring of jobs.

Just as bad, this type of tax plan has been tried before and we already know it won’t create jobs. Decades of experience shows that trickle-down economics does not work.

Republicans continue to claim that the huge tax cuts for the rich and wealthy corporations would help significantly grow our economy — but we know this to be false. At a recent event with National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, when corporate executives were asked if they would invest more in their companies based on this tax plan, very few raised their hands.

It is clear that tax cuts for corporations would do nothing to stimulate higher wages or more hiring — they only would further drain federal coffers and hurt the public goods that companies and our economy rely on, such as strong public education systems and well-maintainedinfrastructure.

We must not accept a tax plan that also would eliminate critical services, such as job training that helps middle-class families cope with wrenching economic transformations and still get ahead — especially if the reason is to give tax cuts to those who need them least. And Republicans already are talking about their next priority being to cut trillions from other crucial safety-net programs, such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Republicans should heed the warnings of their constituents who, as reflected in poll after poll, overwhelmingly believe the GOP tax plan serves special interests and wealthy individuals at the expense of Americans struggling just to get by.

Please, speak out and demand that your representatives vote in favor of your interests, not for those of rich people and corporations.

William C. Mutterperl is retired partner of the Reed Smith law firm and a former vice chairman of PNC Financial Services and PNC Bank.