Trump and aides stand to grab millions from tax cuts

Salon - The newly released GOP tax plan, largely shaped by Trump’s advisers, calls for repealing the estate tax after six years. That, alone, would save Trump’s heirs close to $600 million. Put in perspective, that would be equal to the combined net worth of 6,000 U.S. families of a median net worth, according to data the Federal Reserve recently released.

In total, heirs to 15 of the wealthiest administration officials stand to save about $1.7 billion – a total equal to the combined net worth of 18,000 U.S. families of median net worth.

The heirs to the wealthiest Trump administration officials estate tax repeal savings would equal the combined net worth of 83,000 Hispanic or Latino families of a median net worth or 98,000 African-American families of a median net worth.

The Hill -  Americans oppose the GOP tax plan by a 17-point margin, according to a new ABC News-Washington Post poll. Half of Americans oppose the plan, a 6-point increase from September. Only 33 percent support it.

Robert Reich, Alternet -  For most Americans, the proposed tax cuts are tiny and temporary. That’s right – temporary.  They will shrink in just a few years.  And some middle-class Americans will actually get a tax increase.

Meanwhile, the top 1 percent will get a gigantic tax cut. The Tax Policy Center estimates that the current plan will save the bottom 80 percent between $50 and $450 in taxes per year, but that it saves each person in the top 1 percent an average of $129,000 a year. For people at the very top, like Trump himself, the tax cuts are humongous. And the corporations they own will also get a massive tax cut.

Republicans have just passed a budget that would cut nearly $1.5 trillion from Medicare and Medicaid to pay for these tax cuts. Pell Grants, housing assistance, and even cancer research are also on the chopping block.

Now, they say we shouldn’t take their budget resolution seriously. It was just a device to get the tax bill through the Senate with 51 votes.

But once these tax cuts are passed, the budget deficit will explode. The Tax Policy Center predicts that it will cut federal revenue by $2.4 trillion over the next 10 years.

When that happens, the only way out of the crisis will be something dramatic – exactly the cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, and maybe even Social Security – that Republicans have wanted for years.