The United States may be getting a major tax overhaul after Senate Republicans scraped their way to a victory early Saturday morning, with a bill that critics say senators haven’t read and one that gives major concessions to corporations and the wealthy.
The bill, approved just before 2 a.m. in a 51-49 vote, next heads to conference, CBS News reports. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) was the only Republican to vote no; as with the House version, there was absolutely no Democratic support.
The legislation was officially released hours before the vote, giving the public and legislators virtually no time to examine the details. Twitter was ablaze with outrage as final provisions via notes scribbled in the margins were thrown in at the last minute.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wanted to postpone the vote so that there could be more time to look the bill over, but he was voted down.
“Not a single member of this chamber has read the bill,” Schumer said on the Senate floor before the bill passed. “It would be impossible.”
CBS News reports that Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) claimed that she was handed the amendments by a lobbyist, not anyone in the Senate, implying that lobbyists saw the bill before Democrats.
According to CBS:
The Senate bill permanently lowers the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent. Tax rates will also be cut for individuals, though their tax cuts will expire after a decade. The Senate bill keeps the same number of individual tax brackets, although it changes what those brackets are.
The Senate bill also repeals the individual mandate under Obamacare, something conservatives in Congress have long wanted. The House version does not touch the individual mandate.
The Senate bill, like the House bill, limits state and local income tax deductions to property taxes, with a cap of $10,000. The Senate bill increases the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000.
The Senate bill is expected to add more than $1 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years, according to a Joint Committee on Taxation analysis, a massive debt similar to what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) used to deride former President Barack Obama about.
On Saturday morning the hashtag #TaxScamBill was trending on Twitter, with some saying that the country had devolved into a fascist state (Michael Moore doesn’t mince words), and even pointing out the tax cuts for private jet owners:
President Donald Trump, heading toward his first major victory as president (legislative or otherwise), tweeted his glee over the bill’s passage.
It’s ugly, y’all.
Read more at CBS News.