This letter is in response to Marc Thiessen’s commentary expressed in The Salt Lake Tribune on Dec. 23. Thiessen, staff director of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, believes that the recent portion of middle-income tax cuts bestowed by Congress won’t ever expire, and that Trump and the Republicans should make vulnerable Democrats pay the price in the 2018 elections.
In this new Orwellian world where Trump and Republicans have taken us, one can only hope that they actually do make this tax bill a central issue to be debated in the elections next year. Even if the middle-income tax cuts do expire in 2025 as scheduled, the tax cuts are estimated to add up to $1.5 trillion to our debt.
If Congress does extend the cuts, as Thiessen advocates, the debt would expand trillions more on top of those current projections. As Americans, we should hear how Trump and the Republicans plan to offset these future deficits. Let us hear from their mouths that they would like to cap Medicare and Medicaid, limit the growth of Social Security, and decimate popular and necessary social programs in order to balance future budgets.
Any Republican would tell you they can’t run on, and win with, those positions. So, Trump and Republicans will continue to rush to pass bills that enrich their biggest contributors, at the cost of the general public good. Eventually, our country will reach the point where we figure out that we all have to pay a heavy price for the short-lived sugar high of minimal tax breaks for the middle class and exorbitant reductions for the rich and corporations.
John Trout, Millcreek