Senate Passes Tax Bill
Media Contacts
Adding $1 Trillion to Deficit
U.S. PIRG
“The Senate has passed its version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act which, based on last-minute analysis released by the Joint Committee on Taxation, would add over $1 trillion to the national debt even accounting for any increases in economic output.
“This is a bad trade-off. Senate leadership, blindly committed to economic growth at any cost and still relying on their own magical thinking to raise economic growth projections even higher, have pushed this bill through recklessly, without hearings, with minimal analysis, and even without releasing the text of the bill to the public beforehand.
“The result of this race to the tax finish line? A bill that bloats our deficit, rewards corporations for offshore tax avoidance, fails to meaningfully close loopholes, and ultimately fails to offer real reforms of any kind.
“Future generations will pay for this recklessness and unwillingness to grapple with the hard ecological realities of an endlessly growing economy and endlessly ballooning deficit.
“Rather than settle for this, Congress should craft legislation that balances tax cuts with closed loopholes, cuts to wasteful and inappropriate spending, and other innovative mechanisms to maintain revenue and serve a useful purpose, like a carbon tax.”
