On November 16, 2017, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a tax overhaul bill.
The U.S. Senate has their own bill. The Senate Finance Committee approved a $1.5 trillion tax overhaul proposal after four days of markup. The vote was 14-12, along party lines. Earlier, Senate Republicans added a controversial provision to the bill, repealing the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate, to help raise revenues for tax cuts, which would result in 13 million fewer Americans being covered by health insurance.
With a straight face, House Speaker Paul Ryan said of the House tax overhaul: "And you can’t escape the fact that people own businesses, and if you’re lowering the tax on those businesses, you’re lowering the tax on those [individual] people. But that’s the whole point of all of this and that’s where I think this sort of left-wing rhetoric misses the point, which is: Do you want American businesses to grow and thrive and stay in America and to be competitive, or not? And that is really the simple question.”
The overhaul is nothing more than supply-side economics long favored by Republicans whereby tax cuts to top earners are said to result in more business investment. Lowering taxes for the wealthy and large corporations, the theory goes, fuels a benevolent cycle that ultimately leads to higher wages and a stronger economy. This was pejoratively called the "trickle down" theory under the Reagan administration or "voodoo economic economic policy" as former President George H.W. Bush called it.
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