Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who made income inequality one of his top talking points on the presidential campaign trail last year, is no fan of the Republicans’ proposed tax reforms.
‘This is the Robin Hood principle in reverse,’ Sanders said to CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday. ‘Trump is taking from the middle class and working families in order to give huge tax breaks to the people on top.’
With the Graham-Cassidy health care bill failing to be brought to a vote in the Senate last week, Republicans have tried to quickly move on to tax reform in order to give Trump some points on the board, as the president has yet to score a major legislative victory yet, eight and a half months in.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., was showing no love for the Republicans’ tax reform plan, pointing to an analysis that 80 percent of the benefit would go to the top 1 percent
CNN’s Jake Tapper (left) asked Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. (right) about the Republicans’ tax reform plan, as Sanders often railed against the billionaire class on the campaign trail
But Democrats are already finding the proposal problematic.
On Sunday, Sanders pointed to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Institute that said 80 percent of the tax benefits would go to the top 1 percent of earners.
‘Families like the Walton family or the Koch brothers’ family will receive tens and tens of billions of tax breaks,’ Sanders griped, name-dropping the family who owns Wal-Mart and the family who owns Koch Industries, known as top Republican donors.
‘For Trump to go on television that, “Oh, this doesn’t benefit the wealthy,” is absolutely outrageous,’ Sanders continued. ‘Of course it benefits the wealthy. And of course it benefits large multinational corporations,’ he fumed.
‘Right now we are living in a moment of massive income and wealth inequality,’ Sanders said. ‘The very, very rich are getting rich. Middle class is shrinking.’
Sanders called the plan ‘unacceptable’ and said he and his fellow Democrats planned to fight it.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., sang a similar tune during an appearance on Face the Nation Sunday, telling host John Dickerson that the Democrats had asked for three things.
They had wanted a bill that didn’t benefit the top 1 percent nor busted the budget and they wanted Republicans to embrace a bipartisan approach, instead of trying to get a bill through using the Senate’s reconciliation rules, which only call for a majority vote.
‘Unfortunately the Republican plan doesn’t agree with any of those,’ Schumer said. ‘First, it’s completely focused on the wealthy and the powerful. Not on the middle class. Second, it blows a huge hole and in the deficit. And third, they said they’re going to do it through reconciliation.’
Dickerson pointed out that it sounded like, ‘you’re basically out now to stop this bill, not to shape it.’
Schumer said he did want to work with Republicans, but they would have to change.
‘You know, they have to consult us, they can’t just put down a plan and say, “Bipartisanship is you guys come over and do what we want,” when it’s against our principles,’ Schumer said.
On Thursday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., objected to Republicans even using the terminology tax reform because she thought it was disingenuous.
‘It’s not tax reform,’ she said. ‘It is the same old trickle down economics.’
‘Trickle down economics has always increased the deficit, has not created jobs, so it’s not true, it’s nonsense,’ she said of the Republicans’ plan.