The Tax Bill Shows the G.O.P.'s Contempt for Democracy

[workinclasszero]

The Tax Bill Shows the G.O.P.’s Contempt for Democracy
By WILL WILKINSONDEC. 20, 2017

The Republican Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is notably generous to corporations, high earners, inheritors of large estates and the owners of private jets. Taken as a whole, the bill will add about $1.4 trillion to the deficit in the next decade and trigger automatic cuts to Medicare and other safety net programs unless Congress steps in to stop them.

To most observers on the left, the Republican tax bill looks like sheer mercenary cupidity. “This is a brazen expression of money power,” Jesse Jackson wrote in The Chicago Tribune, “an example of American plutocracy — a government of the wealthy, by the wealthy, for the wealthy.”

Mr. Jackson is right to worry about the wealthy lording it over the rest of us, but the open contempt for democracy displayed in the Senate’s slapdash rush to pass the tax bill ought to trouble us as much as, if not more than, what’s in it.

In its great haste, the “world’s greatest deliberative body” held no hearings or debate on tax reform. The Senate’s Republicans made sloppy math mistakes, crossed out and rewrote whole sections of the bill by hand at the 11th hour and forced a vote on it before anyone could conceivably read it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/opinion/tax-bill-gop-democracy.html

[SHRED]

1. As if we needed more

[workinclasszero]

2. Yeah

Selling out the country to the Russians wasn't enough of a clue, go figure.

[Irish_Dem]

3. Ben Franklin was right, democracy is a good idea if we can keep it. nt

[Eyeball_Kid]

4. I hope that they'll pay dearly for their greed and arrogance.

But there's a good chance that they won't.

[workinclasszero]

7. They will pay mightily if all democrats GOTV in 2018

Or this country becomes the fourth reich. America will call it next year, I hope we choose wisely.

If we get control of the House and Senate then this party needs to boldly and without reservation claw back what was stolen from the American public and pass massive legislation that is pro american working class!

[lame54]

5. I thought their constant...

Cheating in elections did that

[KPN]

6. Yes. They see themselves in a war, and

the enemy is democracy.

[Wounded Bear]

8. In all honesty, most of the Founding Fathers felt the same about real democracy...

That is why the Constitution is set up the way it is, and why every great advance in our country has been based on amending that document to make it more democratic, including especially those amendments between 13 and 18, most which expanded the voter base and led to democratically electing Senators. Throw in the New Deal, which didn't involve amending the Constistution but was done through executive action and legislation. Obamacare was an attempt to further that progress.

Repubs and conservatives have been fighting back against all of that since the various parts were enacted and this is a big step backwards toward where we were in the 1880-90's.