CNN held a debate last night on the GOP tax reform bill that the House recently passed and the Senate is considering. The debate was between GOP Senators Ted Cruz (TX) and Tim Scott (SC) on one side, and Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on the other.
The newest pushback from Democrats is that the GOP plan will actually raise taxes on future middle class earners because the tax breaks for that segment of the base are only temporary. Cantwell and Sanders got their copy of the talking points and do their due diligence spreading the outrage (Cruz does a fair job of dismantling that argument at one point by blaming Democrats for the temporary tax breaks due to their promise to filibuster their future proposed tax reform).
But the real meat of the debate comes as the very beginning when Sanders tries to shut down Scott’s response to a single mother worried that she might see her taxes raised. Scott tells her that the GOP plan will double the amount of money she gets to keep. Sanders counters with numbers from the left-wing Tax Policy Center.
“We have doubled the child tax credit,” Scott tells the young mother from his home state of South Carolina. “The long story short: you get to keep more of your hard-earned money to make better decisions for your family. I think that’s good news.”
Sanders counters that Scott is divorced from reality, citing a statistic from the Tax Policy Center that projects 87 million middle class households would have a raise in taxes by the end of the decade.
“Patently false,” Scott notes. “I think the word I’m looking for is hogwash. [These are] the latest tax brackets from just last night. I’m not sure where your information is coming from…I’m happy to share this with you…shows without any question…you will pay less in taxes than you did last year. Our proposal cuts your taxes. Anyone that tells you anything other than that is inconsistent with reality.”
The exchange occurs at the beginning of the debate, but the entire segment is worth a watch.
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