Tax Cuts HURT CHILDREN.

• Author: Wellstone, Paul
• Position: Republican tax bill - Brief Article

The tax bill that the Republicans passed is Robin Hood in reverse. It is bad economics. And it represents the politics of illusion.

According to Citizens for Tax Justice, the bottom 60 percent of all taxpayers would get an average tax cut of $157; the wealthiest 10 percent would get an average tax cut of $7,520, and the wealthiest 1 percent would get an average tax cut of $45,853 annually when everything is phased in.

Aside from the distributional effects, the tax bill is bad economics because it will build up the debt, rather than pay it down. And huge tax cuts targeted to the wealthy are the last thing we ought to do right now with an expanding economy. They could very well lead to higher interest rates.

In addition, we are not going to be able to have $792 billion in tax cuts and continue to pay down the debt and make the kind of investments in America that we need. To use the old Yiddish proverb, "You can't dance at two weddings at the same time."

The Republican tax plan will put this country in a fiscal straitjacket that will prevent us from doing the things we must to make sure we fulfill the promise of equal opportunity for every child in this country.

With this plan, we are not going to increase Head Start benefits; we are going to cut them.

We are not going to increase health care benefits for our citizens; we are going to cut them.

We are not going to do anything about the acute shortage of affordable housing; we are going to cut housing programs.

We are not going to fully cover veterans who need health care; we are going to cut their care.

Some elected officials here may believe that when it comes to the most pressing issues of people's lives, there is nothing that the federal government can or should do. They argue simply that the surplus ought to be returned to taxpayers rather than using it to preserve programs like Social Security, Medicare, education, environmental protections, and health care.

But the surplus, if it materializes, won't belong to me; it won't belong to adults. It will belong to our children and to our grandchildren. Whatever surplus we have after we take care of urgent priorities ought to be used to pay down the debt. We put that debt on our children's shoulders with Ronald Reagan's borrow-and-spend policies of the 1980s. Whatever surplus we have should also be used to make sure that Social Security and Medicare will be there for our children and grandchildren, just as it is for us. And whatever surplus we...