Calling Bernie's Bluff

Daniel John Sobieski

Kudos to Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders for handing the Republicans the winning issue to hold and expand their Senate and House majorities in 2018: the idea of making the individual tax cuts, set to expire in ten years due to Senate budget reconciliation rules, permanent.

There was Sanders, owner of three homes and patron saint of his admired Venezuela, on CNN's State of the Union last Sunday bemoaning the fact that corporate tax cuts are permanent but not those for the guys and gals in flyover country:

On Sunday, CNN's "State of the Union" host Jake Tapper put Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in an uncomfortable position, forcing him to acknowledge that the middle-class tax cuts in the GOP bill are a good thing:
TAPPER: Next year, 91% of middle-income Americans will receive a tax cut.  Isn't that a good thing?
SANDERS: Yeah, it is a very good thing, and that's why we should have made the tax breaks for the middle class permanent.  But what the Republicans did is make the tax breaks for corporations permanent, the tax cuts for the middle class temporary, and, according to the Tax Policy Center ... at the end of ten years, 83% of the benefits go to the top 1%[;] 60% of the benefits go to the top one tenth of 1%.  Meanwhile, at the end of 10 years, well over 80 million Americans will be paying more in taxes[.]

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