It's Judgment Day in the House, which is scheduled to vote today on its version of the Republican tax reform, while the Senate vote may be upon us soon as well. If nothing else, the squalid deliberations leading up to the vote have shown the historic link of the GOP to corporate America is all but indissoluble, notwithstanding all the populist rhetoric coming from Republican ranks, and all the social-issue moderation oozing from the boardrooms of the Fortune 500.
To curry continual corporate favor, the GOP bills make the corporate tax cut permanent, while putting a ten-year expiration date on its tax cuts for individuals. They also allow corporations to retain their deductions for the state and local taxes they pay, while eliminating such deductions on mere humans.
So much for “corporations are people.” They're better than people, the Republicans insist, and a damned sight more worthy.
The House vote will throw a spotlight on California's 14 Republican members, most of whom have expressed no reluctance to support a bill that not only eliminates the state and local deductions that roughly a third of their constituents take, but also clearly singles out California for GOP perdition by refusing to allow deductions for earthquake or fire damage, while allowing them for damage from hurricanes and floods. To date, only one of the 14—the most electorally endangered, Darrell Issa—has said he'll oppose the bill. It's no surprise that all 14 voted for earlier efforts to repeal the ACA, despite the fact that it would have cost millions of Californians their insurance, or that all 14 oppose California's new sanctuary state law, though many thousands of undocumented immigrants live, work, go to school, and pay taxes in their districts. Now, however, the California members are poised to inflict major tax increases on their middle- and upper-middle-class constituents, many of whom have been known to vote Republican. These members' faith—in their legislative leaders, in empirically refuted pseudo-economic dogma, in corporate campaign contributions, and just maybe in corporate sinecures when their voters toss them out of office—remains unbroken and whole.