GOP passes deeply unpopular tax hike on middle class, sealing their fate for 2018

At 2 AM on Saturday morning, after an endless marathon of procedural wrangling, Senate Republicans voted to wreak havoc on the middle class.

By passing their massive scheme to raise taxes on 87 million working families, give billionaires and corporations a massive litany of breaks and loopholes, and destroy health care, they bring it closer than ever to Donald Trump’s desk, where he can sign into law a massive giveaway of taxpayer money to himself, his family, his friends, and the moneyed interests who fund Republican campaigns.

The GOP plan polled lower than any other tax bill in the modern era. It was crafted in near-total secrecy, with absolutely no input from Democrats, serious economists, or the public. GOP senators pledged their votes even before they knew what was in the bill, and it ended up being rewritten in the middle of the vote because it broke Senate rules, with hundreds of scribbles in the margins.

Even one of Trump’s own advisers said the bill is “going to hurt a lot of different people.”

Worse still, the math was based on lies. Republicans swore the bill would generate so much growth it would pay for itself. But the Joint Committee on Taxation, plugging in the GOP’s own assumptions about how tax cuts affect economic growth, still found the plan would add $1 trillion to the deficit.

But despite all of this, Republicans still moved forward with this harebrained, stupefyingly corrupt scheme.

And they have awoken a sleeping giant that will blow them away in next year’s elections.

Hey Republicans…if you think this is under siege, wait and see what Democrats do if you actually vote for this monstrosity. cc: every @emilyslist candidate. https://t.co/28CZ8H8Vk4

— Christina Reynolds (@creynoldsnc) November 30, 2017

Already, large-scale opposition was mobilizing. Groups like MoveOn, Organizing for Action, Indivisible, and Health Care for America Now have staged over 500 events in the past two months to protest the GOP tax scam. On Wednesday, graduate students across the country staged walkouts in protest. And on Thursday afternoon, crowds gathered at the Capitol for a “people’s filibuster.”

By advancing the bill, and by flatly ignoring the opinions of their constituents, Senate Republicans have opened the floodgates like never before. The GOP is now more likely than ever to lose at least one chamber of Congress next year.

It is time for all Americans who are concerned about the economy and about their families’ futures to stand up, make noise, and resist at every possible level.

And come 2018, Republicans will pay for legislating against the people.