LETTER: Trump tax policy takes from the poor

When you look beyond the cosmetic trimming, this proposed GOP tax bill enacts the largest upward redistribution of wealth of any piece of legislation in American history. It disproportionally benefits corporations and the wealthy, while drastically reducing benefits for the neediest among us.

■ The top 0.6 percent of people, with annual incomes of $1 million or more, would receive more total tax cuts than 127 million people with incomes of less than $100,000 (Center on Budget Policy, May 22).

■ In the simplest terms, the legislation would drastically reduce food and health benefits for the poorest among us in order to pay for sizable tax cuts for the wealthy. This bill would result in cuts of $800 billion to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act and another $300+ billion in cuts to food assistance.

■ Among other significant issues, this legislation eliminates clean energy credits, defunds planned parenthood, enacts deep cuts in education and medical research programs, as well as banning funding for gender affirming care for minors.

■ The plan would also devote $175 billion more to enforce Trump’s immigration agenda as well as another $150 billion increase in military spending.

But surely the most dangerous component of the bill is that it makes the 2017 Trump tax cuts permanent. This will add a staggering $3.8 trillion to the national debt over the next decade (Congressional Budget Office, May).

The United States is already insolvent. We cannot meet our obligations through revenue alone. We must continue to borrow. In short, we are a nation living on a credit card. We will soon find out the GOP is willing to kick the can farther down the road and once again place this enormous fiscal burden on our future generations.