NEW YORK, NY – Late into the night on Friday, December 1st, the U.S. Senate passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The Senate tax bill and the House-version now head into conference committee before landing on the President’s desk.
Senate leadership attempted to use the DREAM Act as a bargaining chip, by persuading Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ) to vote yes with a promise to let him participate in discussions of a possible solution for undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children.
“Pitting communities against each other is the oldest trick in the political playbook, and Americans aren’t falling for it,“ said Steven Choi, Executive Director of the New York Immigration Coalition. “This tax bill is a bad deal for everyone – including immigrant families. It destroys our health system while driving families into poverty. We will continue to fight so that all people, regardless of where they were born or how much money they earn, can have opportunity and justice for all.”
Trump’s Tax Bill will:
- Increase child poverty and hurt children by blocking immigrants from taking advantage of the Child Tax Credit – a lifeline that has kept five million children out of poverty.
- Repeal the individual mandate for everyone to have health insurance, thereby causing 13 million people to lose health coverage and insurance premiums to increase for everyone else. People with preexisting conditions would be especially affected, all to deliver savings to corporations and the 1% richest in the nation.
- Eliminate critical deductions for teachers who buy supplies for their classrooms, graduate students whose scholarships are currently tax-exempt, and everyone who benefits from the ability to deduct their state and local taxes. Except the corporations: they get keep to keep deducting state and local taxes.
- Make the rich richer by giving 42% of the tax cut to the richest 1% in New York. The wealthiest in NYS will get a $34,000 tax cut each year on average once the plan is fully phased in.
- Favor corporations, through a $1 trillion tax cut to wealthy corporations and business owners, which is two times as much as much as individual taxpayers get. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, by 2027, as many as 36 million people making under $75,000 will see a tax increase. 36 million Americans will see HIGHER taxes, especially middle income workers. 1,690,000 New Yorkers will see a tax hike in 2027.