Action: tax "reform," and health care.

As you know, the Republicans didn't vote on their tax "reform" plan yesterday, after it hit a couple of "snags," as the press seems to be putting it. The Senate parliamentarian ruled that the Senate could not consider a proposed "trigger" plan as part of their bill, but the big story is that the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation projected that (surprise, surprise!) the bill wouldn't actually pay for itself, but would instead add over $1 trillion in new deficits over the next decade. Frankly I think they've understated the bill's effects on our federal deficit, but this means we should keep calling our Senators and telling them to reject their tax "reform" plan. If we passed a bill bringing back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income, raising the corporate tax rate to 50%, closing corporate tax loopholes, counting capital gains and dividends as regular income, and keeping taxes low for working families, you know what we wouldn't have to discuss? The possibility of "increased deficits," since such a bill would bring in more revenue and help create more jobs.

The Trump Administration couldn't get the Affordable Care Act repealed, but they still get to run it -- and run it straight into the ground, if they like. Hence they're trying to scrutinize big premium hikes by health insurance corporations even less and loosen rules that force those corporations to spend more on health care and less on administrative costs. Doing these things would, of course, hurt people -- by allowing even higher premiums and delivering less health care, respectively -- but to a Trumphole, the only important thing is making sure our government does nothing for us, and uses our taxpayer money to give out as much corporate welfare as possible. So USPIRG helps you tell the Trump Administration to abandon these efforts to make health care more expensive and allow health insurance corporations to be less accountable to the people. Of course Mr. Trump doesn't care what you think -- he's too busy watching his own balls swing, and making everyone else watch it, too -- but the courts may care if the Trump Administration ignores the popular will.