Tax Bill May Pass On Party Line Vote

PAR Mail 2017-244 | November 30, 2017

Tax Bill May Come Down to One or Two Vote Margin

One Last Chance to Let Your Senators and Reps Hear From You on the Tax Bill

Across the disability community, a final action alert has gone out to call Senators and House Members and plea for a rejection of the pending tax bill.

As articulated in the right hand column by the American Association of People with Disabilities, the bill has many problematic areas for the disability community.

The bill, if approved later this evening or tomorrow morning, will add over a trillion dollars in additional to debt to the U.S. treasury, which will require deep cuts in federal spending over the next decade.

Disability and human service advocates fear that those cuts will most likely come in deep reductions in Medicaid, Medicare and other social service programs.

At this writing, the Republican Party appears to have lined up most of its members to support the bill, with this morning's announcement that Senator John McCain has endorsed the bill. However, disability advocates are continuing to call all Senate offices asking their Senators to reconsider and vote no on the bill.

To reach PA Senators call:

U.S. Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) at (202) 224-4254 or (215) 241-1090 or (412) 803-3501

U.S. Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) at (202) 224-6324 or (215) 405-9660 or (717) 231-7540

The Senate tax bill is extremely dangerous to the well-being of people with disabilities.

Tax cuts open the door for cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Supplemental Security Income, and other services that benefit people with disabilities. While neither the House nor Senate tax bill includes direct cuts to these services, cuts are expected to follow to offset the $1.5 trillion added to the deficit due to providing large tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. Medicaid and other disability services were the target of intense cuts over the summer through the various Affordable Care Act (ACA) repeal bills proposed in the House and Senate. There is no doubt that these same services remain on the chopping block to help pay for the proposed tax cuts.
The Senate bill eliminates the Affordable Care Act (ACA) individual mandate. The individual mandate helps make health insurance affordable. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that 13 million people would lose access to affordable coverage by 2027 if the individual mandate were eliminated. Furthermore, insurance premiums would rise by 10%, which amounts to an increase of hundreds of dollars per year for nearly 7 million middle-income Americans and by over $1,000 per year for seniors, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP).
The Senate bill benefits the wealthiest Americans while the poorest would be worse off. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a report this past Sunday, which found that Americans earning less than $100,000 a year would, ultimately, not benefit from the proposed tax cuts. According to a Washington Post analysis of the CBO report, “By 2019, Americans earning less than $30,000 a year would be worse off under the Senate bill, CBO found. By 2021, Americans earning $40,000 or less would be net losers, and by 2027, most people earning less than $75,000 a year would be worse off. On the flip side, millionaires and those earning $100,000 to $500,000 would be big beneficiaries, according to the CBO’s calculations.”