Terrible Things That the Senate Finance Committee Added to Their Tax Bill Yesterday

Senator Mitch McConnell

The Senate’s version of the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” like the House version that will be voted on as early as tonight, is a terrible, terrible bill. Yesterday, if possible, the Senate made it worse.

  • It would gut the ACA, which would cause an estimated 13 million people to lose health insurance coverage.
  • It adds in language allowing “unborn children” be designated as beneficiaries of “529” college savings plans Because expecting parents can already open these plans, this language is just an attempt to insert an ideological attack on abortion into the tax bill.
  • It adds in a bogus paid leave tax credit that would only subsidize the big corporations who already offer paid leave to their employees, not incentivize new companies to do so.
  • It changes the Child Tax Credit proposal so that it provides even more benefits for higher-income families, but no more to the struggling families who would be helped the most by a fully refundable increase to this credit. In addition, this improvement would expire in 2025, while tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest would be permanent.

This bill already was replete with tax cuts to the super-rich and corporations, and yesterday’s changes offer more of the same. This is still a bill that makes women and families pay for tax giveaways at the top – and the costs just keep rising.