It seems like a great deal until you ask for the bill, which comes to $19.15.
You ask the staff to send the manager to your table. When she arrives, you tell her that you were expecting to pay $15.00 instead of $19.15. She explains that the coupon is subject to rules that are detailed in the fine print.
“Eighty-three percent of the savings go to the wealthiest families in town,” she explains. “They get $4.15 out of the five dollars that you saved. The other 85 cents is yours.”
Consider now the tax bill that is about to be signed into law in the United States of America, a bill that gives 83 percent of its total benefit to the wealthiest one percent of the population. If you happen to be among the wealthiest one percent, but billionaires and the multi-millionaires among us, congratulations! You just received an absolutely wonderful Christmas present courtesy of your government.
But here’s something that you might not know. The government didn’t pay for this gift; they bought it on credit. They expect the middle class to pay for it, now and decades into the future. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the bill will add a crushing $1.5 trillion to the national debt, a debt that weakens our position in the world and will take generations to pay off.
But they didn’t just borrow money to pay for this unapologetic transfer of wealth from the people that work to the people that own everything already. The bill automatically cuts funding for programs that help veterans, farmers, research, and families in need. It cuts infrastructure spending and demands a four-percent cut in funding for Medicare. And of course, being a Republican spending plan, it does everything that it can to weaken the Affordable Care Act.
If you’re in the top one percent, Merry Christmas. If you’re among the rest of us, get out and vote next November. Your country is depending on you.
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