Editor’s note: The Editorial Board is free to read and always will be, but it’s also how I make a living. It’s how I support my family. If you can, please subscribe or leave a tip. Links at the bottom. Thanks! –JS

With respect to the GOP’s budget bill – the one they habitually call big and beautiful – there are a few things worth bearing in mind, because they are always true when it comes to the Republicans and money.

• They always say tax cuts pay for themselves. They don’t. 
• They always say they care about debt and deficits. They don’t.
• They always say they care about budgets in general. They don’t. 
• They always say they are cutting taxes for everyone. Not really.

Again, these are always true. These are the baseline of all discussion of budgets and taxation under Republican administrations. And because these are always true, the real story is how the Republicans are going to rationalize doing what they want to do without revealing the truth.

But there’s more going on than merely lying in order for the very obscenely rich to get away without paying their fair share. 

The Republicans are going to steal. 

This is not an exaggeration. The Republicans are going to take money from you – in the form of cash and benefits – and give it to someone who did not truly earn that money, and who is not truly deserving of it, since they already have as much as any human being will ever need.

If the Democrats were in charge, and they wanted to take some money from the rich and give it to people for groceries (SNAP, otherwise known as food stamps), we know what the Republicans would call it. 

Welfare. 

But that word is missing this time, because “welfare” is never applied to the very obscenely rich. It’s only applied to the “undeserving,” which is to say, nonwhite people, who are the subject of bigotry by white people, which is why those same white people never believe they are on welfare even when they are on welfare, and why they never believe the Republicans would ever take their welfare away. That “wouldn’t make sense,” because they are deserving, after all.

When put like this, it should be clear that so much of the discussion about the Republican budget bill is not about money at all, which is why they can get away with this dog-and-pony show. And that’s why it’s so important to bear the above truths in mind. They don’t have any higher-order principles, unless they include greed and power-lust, so the real story is what the Republicans will say to cover all that up.

When the Democrats help people, the Republicans call it welfare. 

When the Republicans help the rich, they call it a tax cut.

In reality, it’s theft, up and down.  

If either the Senate version or the House version of the GOP’s budget bill becomes law, it will be “the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in US history,” according to Bobby Kogan. “Either bill would be the largest Medicaid cuts in history. Either bill would be the largest SNAP cuts in history. Either bill would do so while pushing huge tax cuts that disproportionately go to the richest.”

Bobby is the senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress. “Theft” isn’t his word. It’s mine. But that’s what I think he’s describing. The Republicans are trying to reshape our society so that those with the least get the least and those with the most get the most. And they are going to do that by doing what they accuse the Democrats of doing: giving welfare to the undeserving.

The CBO released its assessment of the Republicans’ budget bill. If passed, it would add trillions to the debt through tax cuts mostly to the very obscenely rich. Can we just say for everyone that they don’t really care about the debt or even the concept of budgeting?

What must be true is that Congressional Republicans supporting this bill care more about tax cuts than they do about deficits. They might care about deficits in the abstract, but when push comes to shove, and they’re faced with a choice between enacting tax cuts or having lower deficits, they choose tax cuts time and again. 

Regarding your question about the concept of budgeting, what the Senate is looking at doing is so extreme it would be the end of what little was left of budget enforcement. They’re asserting they have the power to invent their own cost estimates on the spot via section 312 of the Congressional Budget Act. If you just get to make up your own numbers, we may as well repeal the entire Congressional Budget Act.

That would be in keeping with their long history of makebelieve. They have been asserting for decades that tax cuts drive revenues when they don’t. The rich keep their money. Yet this lie never dies.

Even George HW Bush called it “voodoo economics”. The truth is that every single even remotely credible group that looked at it said the tax cuts don’t pay for themselves. Even the House Republicans’ insane growth estimates still don’t think it’ll pay for itself. They gave themselves a dynamic score of $2.6 trillion, a total joke. But even that doesn’t get you close to paying for itself. They’re such debt warrior cosplayers they’re stuck pretending their stuff pays for itself. It would be more honest to just say “hey, I lowered taxes because we wanted to.” That’s what George W Bush did. He said he was giving a tax cut to get rid of the surplus. But these folks just lie. They lie about what their tax cuts are doing. They lie about what their Medicaid cuts are doing.

As I was reading the AP report on the CBO’s analysis, I thought to myself: I have been paying about the same amount of taxes on my income for years. Despite all the tax cuts over that time, my tax bill hasn’t budged much. What does this one do for normal people, which is to say, households that earn less than, I dunno, 150 grand a year?

If you give me a few minutes and you’d like, I can crunch the numbers.

Take your time.

OK, it’s about $1325 on average for households making under 200,000, and about $725 on average for households making under $100,000.

So the Republican use of the word “massive” doesn’t apply.

Massive tax cuts for typical Americans? No. These are massive tax cuts if you’re rich. These are $14 a week if you’re making under $100,000. And once you take into account tariffs, many, many people are worse off. And when you take into account Medicaid and SNAP cuts, the poorest Americans are significantly worse off, while the richest Americans are significantly better off.

Hold on a sec: The very richest are going to save on average $300,000? I’m sorry but that doesn’t seem like a lot when you’re bringing home tens of millions, hundreds of millions. I guess my question is about psychology. What’s the point of this exercise?

The largest cuts to the richest American came in the first round of the Trump tax cuts – and those were made permanent. The large corporate tax cuts were made permanent, while the provisions that affect individuals were made temporary. And it was those corporate tax cuts that really benefited the very, very richest Americans. 

So this is $300,000 on top of that.

But I would also say that, even adjusting for income size, the richest Americans still get the largest boost to their after-tax income than regular Americans.

It used to be seen as responsible statecraft to raise revenues in order to balance budgets. The last president to achieve that was Clinton. The last Republican president to raise taxes was GHW Bush. Today, no one talks about responsible budgeting, not even the Democrats. This can’t go on, right?

I think we have a problem of Republican presidents beginning temporary tax cuts and Democratic presidents being unwilling to let most of them expire. And that leads us to a significant revenue hole. 

But I would say that both Obama and Biden raised taxes, on net, for the richest Americans. But yes, our fiscal trajectory is not good, and it’s a product of expensive tax cuts that disproportionately went to the rich.

In the House-passed bill, on average, the bottom 30 percent of the country end up poorer. When you take into account the effect of Trump’s tariffs, the bottom 80 percent end up poorer. 

Their proposal would quite literally make those struggling to get by worse off while making the richest Americans richer. It isn’t some shared sacrifice where everyone has to tighten their belts to work on the deficit. Instead, it’s making working-class people tighten their belts so the richest can loosen theirs.

One other thing: now that we’ve seen both the Senate and House versions, we can safely say that either, if enacted, would be the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in US history. Either would be the largest Medicaid cuts in history. Either would be the largest SNAP cuts in history. Either would do so while pushing huge tax cuts that disproportionately go to the richest. 

Either would dramatically harm the poor while helping the rich.

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