Trump's reverse Robin Hood tax plan

The Congressional Budget Office just released a new analysis of the Senate's tax bill. The CBO examined the combined effect of changes in tax law with reductions in federal spending, like changes in "Medicaid, cost-sharing reduction payments, the Basic Health program, and Medicare."

The agency subtracted changes in federal spending for different income groups from the change in federal revenues allocated to each group. Essentially, the analysis looked at how much effect increased taxes from a group and decreased spending on the same group had on overall deficit estimates.

The groups hit hardest — the ones providing a reduction to federal deficits — are the poorest.

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Positive numbers in the table mean savings to the government and a loss to the people in a group. Negative numbers mean a loss to the government or a net gain for those in the group.

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Just in case you thought the tax bill was designed to help everyone.

  Forbes

Here's the table:

AAgainst the shortest possible odds, as it wends its way through a process controlled almost entirely by Republicans, the proposed tax plan is getting worse, not better, and harsher on the middle and lower classes, not more equitable, and more profitable for the people who buy Ryan his $300-a-bottle vino, not less.

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Confronted by the CBO’s estimate, Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah and true son of the soil, told a group of reporters [...] “I don’t think they’re right.” Well, OK.

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Republican majorities are so desperate to pass something before each of their members is greeted by three spirits on Christmas Eve, they’re throwing things willy-nilly into the bill in order to wrangle the more recalcitrant among their number to vote to pass it. So they have to put something in to please Ron Johnson, and something else to please Susan Collins, and trying to do both is no way to craft legislation that more than half the country already believes is a scheme to shove even more of the country’s wealth upwards. I know the legislative process can be frustrating and messy, but this is like watching someone bailing out the Titanic with a garden rake.

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Not for nothing but, if it passes, this tax bill also will devastate higher education, especially at the graduate level, and it will turn churches into dark-money generators, and that’s to say nothing of what will happen down the road to seniors, and the disabled, and people who are simply struggling to get by. But if Ron Johnson can be made happy, and if the president* can Get A Win, and Paul Ryan can stay on someone’s tab, then we can all bask in the warm glow of the holidays, I guess.

  Charlie Pierce

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.