GOP’s #TBT Tax Plan Is So ’80s, Advocates Charge, Urging Opposition

Lavish corporate subsidies, ballooning national debt, and increasing child poverty among bill’s consequences

WASHINGTON — Republican leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives Thursday released comprehensive tax legislation that would dramatically cut corporate rates, add more than $1.5 trillion to the national debt over 10 years, and strip millions of children of a tax credit instrumental in reducing child poverty.

The legislation includes a provision that would deny the Child Tax Credit (CTC) to more than five million children — 4 million U.S. citizens and the rest young “Dreamers” — whose parents are undocumented. It includes broadly similar provisions constraining American Opportunity Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit eligibility. The CTC alone lifts 1.5 million children out of poverty every year and mitigates poverty’s impact for millions more.

House Ways and Means Committee Chair Kevin Brady (R-TX) has compared House tax policy efforts to landmark tax legislation enacted 1986. The 1980s were also marked by a culture of corporate excess, a $1.8 trillion expansion of the national debt, and increasing child poverty.

The following statement was issued by Jackie Vimo, economic justice policy analyst for the National Immigration Law Center:

“The House GOP has taken ‘Throwback Thursday’ too far, with a tax bill that’s an ’80s mashup only Gordon Gekko would love. It slashes taxes for the rich, like Freddy Kruger attacking a sleepover. For the rest of us, driving up the national debt and child poverty to subsidize lavish subsidies for giant corporations and wealthy donors is a Nightmare on Main Street.”

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