Sens. Chris Coons and Tom Carper are blasting the Trump administration’s tax plan. Coons and Carper held a roundtable discussion Monday with Morris Pearl, former CEO of a large investment firm. He’s also the chair of a group, Patriotic Millionaires, that advocates for more income equity.
The senators argue it will mostly help the wealthy and add trillions of dollars to the deficit.
Pearl said proposals like repealing the estate tax only benefit the very top of the Forbes magazine richest people list. A married couple can give away nearly $11 million tax-free this year.
“People who have never worked for a living, people who have never earned money, but who simply believe they should not have to pay taxes like all the people here in Delaware and around the country who actually do work for a living,” he said.
The tax plan also calls for doing away with deducting state and local taxes. The senators say that could cost a third of Delawareans about $9,000.
It also cuts safety net programs like Medicare. Coons said Republicans plan to balance the tax cuts by slashing health benefits by hundreds of billions over the next decade.
“To try and offset those costs, cut at least 470 billion out of Medicare," he said. "Because of the concerns of some fiscal conservatives, those who still speak up about this, I view that as a floor. I think the Medicare cuts actually might be greater than that be greater than that in the final package.”
Medicare is government health insurance for the elderly and the disabled.
The tax plan also calls for raising the standard deduction, eliminating most itemized deductions and cutting the corporate tax rate. It would repeal the estate tax and exempt U-S corporations from paying taxes on the foreign income they earn.
If Republicans want to pass the plan solely on a party line vote, they have until the middle of November to get the necessary 51 votes.
