'Beyond unacceptable': Bernie Sanders slams Democrats' $1.75 trillion spending package after analysis said it would cut taxes for the rich

Sen. Bernie Sanders described it as "beyond unacceptable" part of the Democratic reconciliation bill.

According to analyses, a planned repeal of the SALT deductions cap would amount to a massive windfall for the wealthiest.

The $1.75 trillion bill has been mired in the Senate amid disputes among Democrats.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, in a tweet, described as "beyond unacceptable" a proposed Democratic social care and climate change bill that, according to a new analysis, could end up delivering a tax cut to the wealthiest 5% of Americans.

On Tuesday, Insider reported that a new provision was being added to the stalled $1.75 trillion social-spending plan that would overwhelmingly benefit wealthier Americans.

The repeal of the SALT provision — which caps federal deductions for state and local tax at $10,000 — has long been championed by some Democratic lawmakers, who believe that the Trump-era law unfairly impacted those in high tax blue states, like New Jersey or California.

The SALT deduction allows taxpayers to deduct their state and local tax totals from their federal obligation. Trump's tax plan especially hit people with properties in multiple states, which could deduct their state property-tax totals in, for instance, New York City, if they had a property there and a nearby state like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, or Connecticut.

But according to an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the repeal of the cap could end up costing the federal government far more than any proposed higher taxes on the wealthy and would result in a $30 billion net direct tax cut for the top 5%.

"That is beyond unacceptable. I will not support more tax breaks for billionaires," tweeted Sanders on Tuesday, linking to a CNN report on the analysis.

"Democrats campaigned and won on an agenda that demands that the very wealthy finally pay their fair share, not one that gives them more tax breaks," Sanders said in a statement. "I am open to a compromise approach which protects the middle class in high-tax states."

"I will not support more tax breaks for billionaires," he added.

The social and climate change bill has been mired for weeks in Congress amid disputes between progressive Democrats and moderates over its scale and how it should be funded. The Democrats have a razor-thin majority in the 50-50 split Senate to pass the bill, meaning the objections of a single lawmaker to a measure included in it have to be accommodated.

Sanders has previously signaled that he is open to revising but not repealing the SALT code altogether, which under the current plan would take place until 2026.

"There are middle-class families in states where property taxes are very high that are paying a whole lot in state and local taxes. And I think we have to support them," Sanders said during an interview with MSNBC in June.

Impressive-Garage-38 on November 3rd, 2021 at 16:37 UTC »

Excerpt from FDR speech, October 21, 1936:

As society becomes more civilized, Government—national, State and local government—is called on to assume more obligations to its citizens. The privileges of membership in a civilized society have vastly increased in modern times. But I am afraid we have many who still do not recognize their advantages and want to avoid paying their dues.

It is only in the past two generations that most local communities have paved and lighted their streets, put in town sewers, provided town water supplies, organized fire departments, established high schools and public libraries, created parks and playgrounds—undertaken, in short, all kinds of necessary new activities which, perforce, had to be paid for out of local taxes.

And let me at this point note that in this most amazing of campaigns, I have found sections of the Nation where Republican leaders were actually whispering the word to the owners of homes and farms that the present Federal Administration proposed to make a cash levy on local real estate to pay off the national debt. They know that the Federal Government does not tax real estate, that it cannot tax real estate. If they do not know that, I suggest they read the Constitution of the United States to find out.

New obligations to their citizens have also been assumed by the several States and by the Federal Government, obligations unknown a century and a half ago, but made necessary by new inventions and by a constantly growing social conscience.

The easiest way to summarize the reason for this extension of Government functions, local, State and national, is to use the words of Abraham Lincoln: "The legitimate object of Government is to do for the people what needs to be done but which they cannot by individual effort do at all, or do so well, for themselves."

Taxes are the price we all pay collectively to get those things done.

To divide fairly among the people the obligation to pay for these benefits has been a major part of our struggle to maintain democracy in America.

Ever since 1776 that struggle has been between two forces. On the one hand, there has been the vast majority of our citizens who believed that the benefits of democracy should be extended and who were willing to pay their fair share to extend them. On the other hand, there has been a small, but powerful group which has fought the extension of those benefits, because it did not want to pay a fair share of their cost.

That was the line-up in 1776. That is the line-up in this campaign. And I am confident that once more—in 1936—democracy in taxation will win.

Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.

Before this great war against the depression we fought the World War; and it cost us twenty-five billion dollars in three years to win it. We borrowed to fight that war. Then, as now, a Democratic Administration provided sufficient taxes to pay off the entire war debt within ten or fifteen years.

Those taxes had been levied according to ability to pay. But the succeeding Republican Administration did not believe in that principle. There was a reason. They had political debts to those who sat at their elbows. To pay those political debts, they reduced the taxes of their friends in the higher brackets and left the national debt to be paid by later generations. Because they evaded their obligation, because they regarded the political debt as more important than the national debt, the depression in 1929 started with a sixteen-billion-dollar handicap on us and our children.

Now let's keep this little drama straight. The actors are the same. But the act is different. Today their role calls for stage tears about the next generation. But in the days after the World War they played a different part.

The moral of the play is clear. They got out from under then, they would get out from under now—if their friends could get back into power and they could get back to the driver's seat. But neither you nor I think that they are going to get back.

...

You would think, to hear some people talk, that those good people who live at the top of our economic pyramid are being taxed into rags and tatters. What is the fact? The fact is that they are much farther away from the poorhouse than they were in 1932. You and I know that as a matter of personal observation.

A number of my friends who belong in these very high upper brackets have suggested to me, more in sorrow than in anger, that if I am reelected they will have to move to some other Nation because of high taxes here. I shall miss them very much but if they go they will soon come back. For a year or two of paying taxes in almost any other country in the world will make them yearn once more for the good old taxes of the U.S.A.

Modern_Bear on November 3rd, 2021 at 16:02 UTC »

In a side note, Joe Mansion is now all in on the plan, now that it benefits his donors (cough cough) I mean constituents.

bryfy77 on November 3rd, 2021 at 15:53 UTC »

The fuck? How did that happen? That was, like, the exact opposite of the plan, guys.