In late 2017, about a year before they were summarily booted out of office, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives passed something they called the“Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.”
At that time Republicans not only made up a majority in the House, but in the United States Senate as well. They also had the amazing fortune of having a president eager and willing to sign whatever they chose to put in front of him. So they had an unprecedented, really tremendous amount of power, just then.
They could have used that power to fundamentally improve the lives of ordinary Americans. They could have passed all kinds of incentives to keep corporations from “outsourcing” jobs and hiding and parking their profits overseas. They could have routed vast sums of money to rebuild deteriorating highways and bridges that Americans rely on every day. They could have bolstered up Medicare and Social Security, ensuring that millions of citizens enjoyed a dignified and prosperous retirement. They could have helped families pay for their kids’ college educations. They could have funded all kinds of services that would improve the quality of Americans’ lives.
Instead, they chose to do the exact opposite. They chose to reward the corporate conglomerates who had bankrolled their political campaigns with millions of dollars in campaign ads and ghost-written voter suppression laws. They completely turned their backs on the ordinary people who had voted them into office. And they did this knowing full well that their big, ballyhooed tax “cut” was really nothing more than a huge tax giveaway to the nation’s wealthiest, that would not do a single thing to help the people who had voted for them. They knew that as long as they kept repeating the time-tested mantras of “abortion” and “undeserving” and “illegals,” that their gullible voting base would swallow whatever snake oil they could cook up. That’s why they never even bothered to mention their “tax cut” in their re-election campaigns last November. They knew it was all an embarrassing scam.
They were all in on it. Every single one of them. And now, safe in their cushy corporate sinecures they had all pre-arranged before the voters wised up and kicked them out of office, they’re having a good laugh at everyone else’s expense. Yes, the Republicans fucked Americans over good, and they’re not looking back.
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