{"id":14580,"date":"2023-03-03T12:10:49","date_gmt":"2023-03-03T20:10:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=14580"},"modified":"2023-03-03T12:10:49","modified_gmt":"2023-03-03T20:10:49","slug":"orwellian-titled-gop-house-bills-neither-rein-in-inflation-nor-create-tax-fairness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=14580","title":{"rendered":"Orwellian-Titled GOP House Bills Neither ‘Rein-In’ Inflation Nor Create ‘Tax Fairness’"},"content":{"rendered":"

In addition to “chaos and dysfunction”<\/a>, MAGA Republican extremists, who now exercise dominance<\/a> over the U.S. House agenda, have also recently advanced a pair of Orwellian-titled bills.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) boasted via Twitter<\/a> that the “House passed my REIN IN inflation Act today.”<\/p>\n

There isn’t a single word in her short, single-page bill, the “Reduce Exacerbated Inflation Negatively Impacting the Nation Act”<\/a>, which serves to “rein in” what U.C. Berkely Economics Professor and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich described<\/a> as the principal driving factor for today’s inflation: corporate greed. To the contrary, per the Congressional Budget Office<\/a>, the measure simply mandates that Presidents provide an “estimate” on the potential inflationary impacts of “major” executive orders.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, these same House Republicans aspire to devastate the middle and working classes via their Orwellian-titled “Fair Tax Act”<\/a> (HR-25), which Reich described<\/a> as “one of the most regressive proposals in a generation, imposing a 30% federal sales tax on everything Americans buy from gas to food.” That tax increase would be piled onto the backs of the bottom 63% of Americans who are currently “living paycheck-to-paycheck,” according to a new report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It would be nothing short of farcical for Republicans to suggest a new, 30% sales tax would be offset by HR-25’s elimination of the IRS, the federal income tax (both corporate and personal), FICA<\/a> (the taxes that fund Medicare and Social Security), and estate taxes (currently applicable<\/a> only to estates valued over $12.92 million).<\/p>\n

At present, the payroll tax rate for low income Americans is 14.1%<\/a>. As Truthout’s<\/i> Jake Johnson observed<\/a>, quoting Matt Breunig of the People’s Policy Project, the so-called Fair Tax Act would force the poorest Americans to “pay roughly 70% of their income in taxes as the result of the bill’s levy on consumption.”<\/p>\n

Inflation<\/a> is defined as<\/a> “a rise in prices, which can be translated as the decline in purchasing power over time.” According to Investopedia<\/i><\/a>, the highest rate of inflation ever experienced in the U.S. (29.78%), occurred in 1778. HR-25 would top that 245-year old mark via a 30% increase in the cost of everything we buy.<\/p>\n

I hope someone has told Elise Stefanik.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/strong><\/center>Ernest A. Canning is a retired attorney, author, and Vietnam Veteran (4th Infantry, Central Highlands 1968). He previously served as a Senior Advisor to Veterans For Bernie<\/a>.<\/span> Canning has been a member of the California state bar since 1977. In addition to a juris doctor, he has received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science. Follow him on twitter: @cann4ing<\/b><\/a><\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In addition to “chaos and dysfunction”, MAGA Republican extremists, who now exercise<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[390,1644,613,300,544,666,198],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-14580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-elise-stefanik","category-irs","category-republicans","category-robert-reich","category-social-security","category-us-house"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14580"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=14580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}