Following Senate passage of the Republican tax bill, Jason Bailey, executive director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, released the following statement:
“Both the Senate and House tax bills are enormous new giveaways to the very wealthy and major corporations at the expense of working families, including tens of millions of low-income and middle-class Americans whose taxes would actually go up at the same time. Kentucky’s U.S. Senators wrongly voted for major new gifts to the wealthy and powerful backed by false claims of trickle-down growth that we have seen fail in Kansas and other states.
“The plan in both the House and the Senate will create pressure for cuts to everything from nutrition assistance for families to education, Medicare and Medicaid, and infrastructure and lead to further strain on our state budget. The Senate bill goes further, increasing the number of uninsured Americans by 13 million, including an estimated 181,000 Kentuckians, to pay for even larger corporate tax cuts.
“Small changes won’t fix the bills’ fundamental flaws. With the framework both houses are using, the final tax plan coming out of a conference committee will harm most families and lead to further undermining of the public investments we need to prosper. A tax policy based on helping those who need it least just leaves Kentuckians further behind. House members must abandon support for an approach so radically out of step with the commonwealth’s actual needs.”