Editor’s note: The following is a statement released by CHN Executive Director Deborah Weinstein in response to the House GOP tax proposal, unveiled Thursday, Nov. 2. To learn more about the proposal, please see CHN’s latest Human Needs Report.
“The full analysis is not yet in, but the outlines are clear.  The corporate tax rate drops from 35 percent to 20 percent.  Companies that have avoided taxes by sheltering income in overseas tax havens will get increased incentives to keep doing so.  Millionaires get multiple breaks.  Their gains are in the trillions of dollars.  Who pays?  The rest of us, and especially low- and moderate-income people.

“Some low-income people will pay because they lose benefits.  Five million children in immigrant families will lose the Child Tax Credit.  Other low-income college students will lose assistance.  Families seeking to adopt children, including children with special needs, will lose a tax credit to assist them.  Millions will lose out because services they need shrink – education, health care, child care, nutrition, housing, and more.

“The tax cut legislation introduced in the House is a plan to disinvest in our people.  Support for public education is reduced in multiple ways and at all levels, while tax savings for higher income people who use private schools will increase.  The looming deficit opened up by tax cuts benefiting the rich and corporations will be the excuse for new rounds of cuts to vital programs.  And all to pay for tax cuts for people who don’t need them, and to businesses that will not invest in jobs.  The proposed tax cuts will weaken us and make us less able to respond to meet our needs, whether emergency or long-term.  Congress should reject them and turn its attention to greater investment in services that really help people.”