Though a Republican-led tax bill expanding President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, among other tax and spending provisions, was stalled in Congress on Friday, Black elected leaders, advocates, and tax experts are still sounding the alarm on the plan that they say largely benefits billionaires and threatens the livelihoods of Black Americans.
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives will continue to work on the controversial reconciliation bill through the weekend. House Speaker Mike Johnson hopes to advance it to a floor debate next week. The tax and spending legislation includes President Trump’s top priorities, including a permanent expansion of his 2017 tax cuts, major cuts to social programs, including health care, and increased spending for military and ICE operations, and border security.
“Trump’s budget is likely to harm Black Americans the most,” said NAACP President Derrick Johnson. He told theGrio, “His budget is calling for $15 billion in cuts to the Department of Education, the agency that enforces civil rights laws in American schools. He wants to cut $18 billion of assistance to the National Institute of Health, which includes programs related to public health in communities of color. And he wants to cut $26 billion from the rental assistance program, including Section 8.”
Most alarming to advocates, the Trump-GOP tax and spending bill calls for steep cuts to Medicaid, totaling hundreds of millions, and also calls for work requirements for recipients.
U.S. Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester, D-Del., warned that the tax and budget legislation would “take away health care for millions of Americans and shut down hospitals across the nation.” The senator told theGrio, “We still have major health disparities in America, from Black maternal mortality rates going up to Black Americans being more at-risk for chronic health conditions or dying from treatable illnesses.”
Blunt Rochester added, “This bill is not just bad policy, it would make it that much harder to finally close health care gaps and improve the quality of life for Black Americans.”
While some provisions of the tax budget plan, like expanding the Child Tax Credit and not taxing tips and overtime pay, may be celebrated, Michael Linden, executive director of Families Over Billionaires, told theGrio, “It is a transfer of income and wealth from Black and brown communities into much more predominantly white families.”
According to a New York Times report, while most Americans could see lower taxes if the bill is passed into law, the adverse effects of the spending cuts proposed by Republicans would outweigh any tax benefits.
Linden noted that the estimated $4 trillion tax cuts would largely go to the nation’s “richest 5%,” adding, “That’s not just money that will fall out of the sky. That is a cost that everybody else is going to have to pick up [and] we know that the cost is going to end up falling disproportionately on Black people.”
“Extending all of these tax cuts for rich people and corporations is incredibly expensive, and it puts enormous pressure on other areas of the federal budget,” Linden explained. “What happens is Congress then says, well, we can’t afford to invest in health care or housing or education. We have to cut those things because there’s not enough money anymore.”
Black Americans disproportionately rely on federal assistance and social safety net programs. Not to mention, U.S. Census Bureau data shows that while white households saw their incomes increase on average, Black households remained flat. In fact, Black and Hispanic households remained the lowest in earnings among all racial and ethnic groups, with median incomes of $56,490 and $65,540, respectively.
Instead of passing massive tax cuts that will mostly benefit wealthy Americans, advocates point to a growing political movement to raise taxes on the rich. According to Pew Research Center, a majority of Americans (63%) say corporations and households making over $400,000 should see higher taxes.
“They think that they’re able to pull the wool over people’s eyes and make it about, you know, fraud or waste or abuse,” Linden said of the Republican economic agenda. “To be clear, there is fraud, waste, and abuse in the federal budget. A lot of it, by the way, is in the tax code, not in Medicaid and Medicare and Social Security.”
NAACP President Johnson suggested an irony in the Trump administration’s mass firing of federal employees and major spending programs in the name of eliminating so-called fraud and waste. Referring to Trump advisor and owner of Tesla, Elon Musk, Johnson said the president “colluded with an unelected billionaire to cut funding for vital programs across the country. Now, he’s pushing for budget cuts that will devastate millions of Americans.”
Johnson told theGrio, “If we’re not careful, this administration will steal our benefits paid for by hard-working people.” He added, “It’s time to remind Congress that instead of awarding billionaires even more money, they should fight to protect the hard-working Americans who have paid for the right to retire with dignity, to receive healthcare, and to feed their children.”
