Top Senate Democrat Sends Paul Ryan Reeling After Calling Out His Tax Plan Lies

Senate Democratic Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) called out Speaker of the House Paul Ryan for lying about how the Republican plan to cut taxes for the rich would help the middle class.

Video:

Earlier on the same program, Ryan laughably tried to sell the tax plan as, “The purpose of this is to help people who are living by a paycheck keep more of their own hard-earned money but also get more jobs, a faster-growing economy.”

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Chuck Schumer tore Ryan’s lies to shreds.

Transcript via Face The Nation:

JOHN DICKERSON: Well, I guess they would argue that Puerto Rico’s just a much different case than Florida or Texas. But let’s move on here to tax reform quickly. You’ve been talking to the president about making deals with the president. Is this something you can do a deal with the president on?

CHUCK SCHUMER: Well, look. We Democrats sent a letter to the Republican leadership and the president, said that here were three things that we thought tax reform ought to have. 1) Tax breaks ought not to go to the top 1% but ought to be focused on the middle class. 2) It ought not blow a hole in the deficit. And 3) it ought to be done in a bipartisan way, not through reconciliation.

Unfortunately the Republican plan doesn’t agree with any of those. First, it’s completely focused on the wealthy and the powerful. Not on the middle class. Second, it blows a huge hole in the deficit. And third, they said they’re going to do it through reconciliation. That’s a partisan process. It excludes Democrats. It’s the same process that led to the demise on health care. And let me just address one thing, John. Speaker Ryan keeps saying it helps the middle class. That’s not true. What he’s saying and what the plan is are totally different.

Let me go over three quick points. 1) They get rid of the estate tax. The only people who benefit are the very wealthy, estates over $11 million. 5,000 estates will get over $3 million each. Second, they lower the top rate from 39 to 35. That affects the wealthy. They raise the lowest rate from 10 to 12. That affects working people.

What Republicans are proposing is based on the ideological myth that tax cuts create growth, but as was recently seen in Kansas, massive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations don’t create growth. They explode deficits and trash the economy.

Paul Ryan was lying 80% of the Republican tax cuts go to the top one percent of earners. It is a fantasy to think that economic growth will pay for the tax cuts, and taxes will be raised on millions of middle-class families all across the country.

Since Ryan can’t defend the plan based on what it does, he lied, and every single Democrat needs to debunk those lies and argue for a real middle-class tax cut, not a tax cut for the rich that everyone else will pay for later.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association