One of the Senate bill provisions that struck me as particularly petty would ban employers from giving their employees gift cards as end-of-year bonuses. Apparently these Republican lawmakers are determined to prevent ordinary American workers from pocketing a $25 or $50 gift card for Home Depot or Target without reporting it as taxable income.
Other examples of bias against the middle class include provisions to prohibit teachers from deducting the cost of school supplies and to force graduate students to pay income taxes on tuition waivers. The House version would also repeal the deduction families can take for medical costs that exceed 10 percent of their income.
Meanwhile, these same politicians are planning to dole out billions of dollars in tax breaks to the very wealthiest Americans. According to the Tax Policy Center, by 2027, 62% of the tax cuts would go to the richest 1%.
While the Alabama race was dominated by questions of sexual misconduct rather than tax fairness, Jones did raise objections on the campaign trail to the GOP tax plan, saying it was “overloaded” with tax breaks for the wealthy. And exit polls show that support for President Trump among Alabama voters has declined dramatically since the 2016 election. Trump won 62 percent of votes last year. On Tuesday, only 48 percent of Alabama voters said they now approved of his performance.
“Americans in even the reddest areas firmly reject the Trump-GOP agenda,” said Frank Clemente, Executive Director of Americans for Tax Fairness, in a statement after the election upset. Like Senator Shumer, Clemente also called on the GOP to slow down the process to “allow the nation’s newest Senator to have a vote on this legislation that will affect the next generation.”