Ernst and Grassley Vote No on Permanent Middle-Class Tax Cuts

The Gazette regularly publishes "Votes in Congress," votes by Iowa representatives and senators. I am grateful for their efforts to inform the public. I didn't know how slavishly loyal most of our elected officials (except for 2nd District Rep. Dave Loebsack) are to their rich donors until I saw how they voted in the 12/3/17 Gazette. For example, U.S. Senate Democrats proposed a measure that sought to make middle- and lower-class income tax cuts permanent just as the bill's corporate tax cuts are permanent. Without this change, most middle-income and working-poor people's taxes would go up by 2027.

Both Senators Joni Ernst and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) voted no! They're fine with tax cuts for the rich being made permanent, but not for the middle class!

Ernst and Grassley also voted no on a proposal to link hiring to corporate tax savings to require corporations to use a significant share of their tax savings to expand payrolls. The Democrats sponsored a measure to require corporations to spend as much of their tax savings on hiring new workers as they do on raising executive pay, buying back stock, and increasing dividend payments to shareholders. Ernst and Grassley voted no again. Corporate CEOs said that hiring and paying workers more was number 4 on their wish list. So much for trickle-down economics. CEOs have no intention of trickling down money they get from their tax breaks to workers.

The purported motive of cutting corporate taxes from 35% to 20% is to bring back corporate money to the United States. The "fact" that corporations pay 35% in federal taxes is a bogus premise to begin with. Forty percent of corporations pay no federal tax; General Electric even gets a rebate on taxes! Even if the U.S. corporate tax is 20% and even if U.S. corporations actually paid 35% in the past, which they didn't, the Cayman Islands' tax rate is still lower.

To add insult to injury, Sen. Charles Grassley justified the tax cuts to the estate tax with a statement that sounded like his great-grandfather might have said it. Grassley made an antiquated "moral" argument by deriding those who spend "every darn penny on booze, women, and movies" versus those who invest their money and therefore have millions of dollars to leave to their progeny.

First, Grassley turns women into a commodity to be bought. Are we? And what's wrong with going to the movies?

My friends, especially the men, have had a lot of fun with Grassley's quotation from 1880.

Chuck will probably die in the harness but I wish he'd retire. A Republican friend of mine voted for him in the last election and then said thoughtfully, "I don't think I'll vote for him again."

Chuck will probably try to donate his Senate seat to his grandson, Pat Grassley, just as John Conyers of Detroit, Michigan, has endorsed his son, John Conyers III, to replace him. What is Congress, a dynasty? A House of Lords? If it is, we need a parliamentary system like England's to make changes more quickly when corruption raises its ugly head.