House Speaker Paul Ryan went on NPR Friday morning to explain the Republicans’ radical social engineering project they call a tax bill. Words came out of his mouth, but if you're looking for substance, or even coherence, you're out of luck.
Asked what the choices made for who wins and who loses in this bill, and what that says about both Ryan's and the Republicans' priorities, there was gibberish about simplification: "By doubling the standard deduction, instead of 70 percent of Americans being able to fill an easier tax form, nine out of 10 Americans can fill out their taxes on a post card. So by simplifying the system that way and reducing loopholes, you can actually simplify dramatically and lower tax rates across the board."
Pushed (and not effectively because Steve Inskeep is not great at this) about how this isn't really helping the middle class, Ryan buries the question with "math." "Instead of your first $12,000 being tax-free, as a couple your first $24,000 are tax-free. You pay lower tax rates up the income scale until you come to the top tax bracket, which is a million dollars. You have your child tax credit go from $1,000 per child to $1,600 per child. So things like that clearly produce tax relief for middle-income taxpayers." But what about all the deductions that are going away while these rates are changing, particularly the 9 million or so who have extremely high medical expenses? Here's where Ryan proves that he's either a total ignoramus or a liar (of course, he's both).
But it's typically a higher income person because of the way the Obamacare tax increase worked on that. You have to make a pretty good amount of money before you can even enjoy the ability to use that tax deduction.
That's just a lie. Obamacare subsidies have essentially nothing to do with this, and it is not wealthy people taking this deduction. About three-quarters of the people taking it are over 50 and 70 percent of them make less than $75,000 a year. It's used largely for long-term care, costs that aren't covered by most insurance plans and which can easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars every year.
And on and on it goes. But there is one passage—an aside, really—in which he tells the truth about what they're really going for here.
Actually I don't think it will increase the deficit. That's my entire point. I don't think this will increase the deficit. I think this will give us the kind of economic growth we need to keep jobs, to keep companies here, and faster economic growth. There's two things you gotta do to get the deficit. You've got to grow the economy. You got to control spending. We need—we have far more work to do to control spending. Believe you me. I wish our health care bill that we passed in the House would have passed because that would have done a, been a good step in the process. But we also had to focus on economic growth, and this is our focus on economic growth. We've got to get back to controlling spending, but if we don't pass this tax law, we will not get the kind of economic growth we can get in this country. And if you want to get the deficit and the debt under control, control spending, grow the economy. This grows the economy.
This will not grow the economy. Any responsible economist will tell you so. It's unclear whether Ryan is enough of a true believer to actually buy into the pixie dust, but what we do know about him is that he's committed his whole career to cutting spending. He's already said that's what he's turning to just as soon as they balloon the deficit with this tax giveaway.
Jam your senators' phone lines at (202) 224-3121. Tell them to vote "no" on the Republican tax bill.