Paul Ryan: Americans oppose tax scam because they're too stupid to understand it
The majority of Americans hate the Republican tax scam. It’s not hard to understand why. A plan to raise taxes on the middle class and cut essential programs to give massive handouts to billionaires and corporations is not going to have support from the very people who would be harmed by such a plan. But […]
It’s not hard to understand why. A plan to raise taxes on the middle class and cut essential programs to give massive handouts to billionaires and corporations is not going to have support from the very people who would be harmed by such a plan.
But according to Speaker Paul Ryan, the real reason Americans don’t like his tax scheme is because they’re just too dumb to understand it.
RYAN: You’ve got pundits and spinsters and all of this — spinmeisters — out there, you know, confusing the public. And so that’s what I think is happening here with tax reform, like you see with any large piece of legislation. What comforts me greatly is the fact that the results are going to produce fantastic results that will improve the lives of hardworking taxpayers in this country. I’m convinced that this is going to help repatriate capital, I’m convinced that this is going to launch more investment in businesses and and workers.
Too bad for Ryan that he’s completely wrong. Polling shows that the more people know about the tax scheme, the less they like it. And that’s not because they’ve been confused by “spinsters.” It’s because every study shows that the plan would devastate America and harm middle-class families.
That’s not just coming from pundits. Republicans in Congress have admitted they’re trying to ram through their bill to appease their donors — not their constituents. Republican governors are refusing to sign on to the plan because they know how much it will hurt their states.
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who is neither a pundit nor a spinmeister, was caught lying about a supposed study to “prove” the benefits of the plan. No such study exists because no such benefits for the middle class exist, and Mnuchin is now under investigation for his shady cover-up.
And as for the comfort Ryan takes in thinking about all the wonderful results, like corporations investing in businesses and paying their workers more? That’s not true either. Not according to pundits, but according to CEOs who have outright admitted they and their shareholders will pocket the extra money.
The tax scam is not historically unpopular because Americans don’t understand it, but because they do understand it. They understand that it will benefit the wealthiest Americans who don’t need help, at the expense of the rest of Americans who do.
And Americans also understand that for all the lip service about “hardworking Americans,” the Republican Party’s has shocking disdain for them. Sen. Chuck Grassley recently admitted that he doesn’t think the middle class deserves tax cuts because they’ll just spend “every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”
Americans aren’t quite as dumb as Republicans would like to think they are. And that’s why they’re opposed to the scam, and they’re opposed to any member of Congress who votes for it.
But at least Paul Ryan is comforted thinking otherwise.
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