SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
americans for tax fairness
House GOP Approves Economic Attack on Poor to Fund 'Big Payout' for Billionaires
"Republicans want to give away trillions of dollars to the richest people in our country," said Rep. Rashida Tlaib, "and they want to pay for it by taking food away from hungry children and letting people die from a lack of healthcare coverage."
Apr 10, 2025
In a party-line vote, House Republicans on Thursday approved a budget blueprint that sets the stage for the GOP to pass another round of tax cuts for the rich, paid for in part by slashing Medicaid, federal nutrition assistance, and other critical programs.
The final vote was 216 to 214, with two Republicans—Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Victoria Spartz of Indiana—and every Democrat opposing the measure, which now must be converted into legislation.
The budget reconciliation process that Republicans are using for their sweeping bill means it can pass with a simple majority in both chambers of Congress.
"Republicans are ramming through a budget that includes $880 billion in cuts to Medicaid and at least $230 billion in cuts to food assistance to pay for tax breaks for billionaires," Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said in a statement Thursday. "These are the largest Medicaid and food assistance cuts in American history."
“Make no mistake: Republicans want to give away trillions of dollars to the richest people in our country like Elon Musk, and they want to pay for it by taking food away from hungry children and letting people die from a lack of healthcare coverage," Tlaib continued. "We must raise our voices and defeat this dangerous Republican budget."
"In unifying behind this budget resolution, congressional Republicans are telling us they are serious about their agenda to rob everyday Americans in order to deliver a big payout to the ultra-wealthy in tax cuts."
Passage of the blueprint came hours after Republican congressional leaders and President Donald Trump managed to win the support of GOP holdouts concerned that the forthcoming legislative package won't reduce spending enough to offset the massive cost of fresh tax cuts, which would largely benefit the rich.
During a press conference Thursday following the vote, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) signaled that they are unified behind the goal of cutting at least $1.5 trillion in federal spending over the next decade—an objective that Trump has endorsed.
"We have a lot of United States senators who believe that is a minimum," Thune said of the $1.5 trillion figure.
Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said in a statement that "in this budget framework, there is no way to cut $1.5 trillion in spending while protecting health coverage through Medicaid and food assistance through [the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program]."
"This budget architecture was terrible a couple of months ago," Parrott added. "It is a far worse plan at a moment when the president's tariffs, chaotically crafted and applied, have caused business uncertainty to soar and raised the risk of a recession, higher unemployment, and surging prices."
In a post on his social media site, Trump congratulated House Republicans for approving the measure and claimed it would deliver "the Largest Tax and Regulation Cuts ever even contemplated."
An analysis released last week by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that renewing soon-to-expire provisions of the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law would cost $5.5 trillion over the next decade. Republican lawmakers have also called for an additional $1.5 trillion in tax cuts, which would push the overall cost of the tax package to $7 trillion.
David Kass, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, said in a statement Thursday that "the country is rapidly undergoing an intensifying economic crisis created by Trump and congressional Republicans, and the only legislative solution they've put forward is to double down on tax cuts for billionaires while eliminating healthcare access and food assistance for millions of Americans."
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, echoed that message, saying that "in unifying behind this budget resolution, congressional Republicans are telling us they are serious about their agenda to rob everyday Americans in order to deliver a big payout to the ultra-wealthy in tax cuts."
"As they now work to actually write the bill that they intend to push through via the reconciliation process, which will deplete funding for healthcare, nutrition, and other critical human needs in order to line the pockets of CEOs and billionaires, they should know we are also serious in our efforts to fight back," Gilbert added.
Keep ReadingShow Less
'They've Come to Collect': Report Details Crisis of Billionaires Buying US Elections
"The billions of dollars of donations these oligarchic clans give candidates, parties, and particularly outside spending groups drown out the voices and concerns of ordinary voters," according to the report.
Apr 02, 2025
The ever-growing amount of billionaire cash in elections is poisoning U.S. democracy, according to a report published Wednesday by the advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness—which found that the top 100 billionaire families spent an eye-popping $2.6 billion on federal contests in 2024.
That's more than twice the roughly $1 billion spent by individual billionaire donors in 2020, according to the group, and constitutes 160 times the amount of billionaire political spending since the 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. That decision paved the way for the proliferation of super political action committees (PACs), a type of committee that can accept unlimited donations to spend on political activity.
Picking apart that $2.6 billion, there's a clear partisan skew: 70% of that billionaire money went to entities supporting Republican candidates, while 23% went to entities backing Democratic candidates. The other 7% went toward independent candidates—such as presidential contender Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is now a Cabinet secretary—and committees that gave to candidates from both parties who champion specific issues, such as cryptocurrency.
That skew is particularly pronounced when it comes to the competitive Senate races that determined control of the chamber in 2024.
Looking at Senate contests in Arizona, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the authors of the report found that nearly 80% of the total billionaire cash in these races—which tallied $1.14 billion in outside spending—went to outside groups supporting Republican candidates, compared to 20% used to support Democratic hopefuls.
"The billions of dollars of donations these oligarchic clans give candidates, parties, and particularly outside spending groups drown out the voices and concerns of ordinary voters, endangering democracy and distorting public policy," the report states.
What's more, "this undue influence by the billionaire donor class over our government—always a concern and already present in mostly indirect ways—has found its full, frightening expression in the second Trump administration with the ascendancy of Elon Musk, the world's richest man and the biggest billionaire donor in the 2024 elections," the authors wrote.
Musk's ability to convert his extreme wealth into political influence in the Trump administration contrasts with reports that Musk pays relatively little in taxes. In 2018, for example, Musk paid nothing in federal income taxes even as his wealth soared, largely due to Tesla stock appreciation.
But Musk is just the "most notorious example of billionaires literally buying power," according to the group. ATF highlighted that billionaire Linda McMahon secured a position as President Donald Trump's education secretary after she and her ex-husband gave tens of millions to support Republican candidates, as did billionaire businessman Howard Lutnick, now the commerce secretary.
The report, titled Billionaires Buying Elections: They've Come to Collect, is the latest in ATF's "billionaires buying elections" series, and according to the group it is the most comprehensive because it covers both direct billionaire giving and "traces the indirect routes billionaire cash can take through campaign committees contributing to each other."
In its methodology section, the report gives the example of WinSenate—a super PAC that works to elect Democrats to the Senate—which did not report billionaire contributions, but received all of its funding from the Senate Majority PAC. Because the Senate Majority PAC got 19.9% of its funding from billionaires, the report counted WinSenate's share of billionaire spending at 19.9%.
According to the report, other big-name Republican megadonors in the 2024 cycle included shipping supply magnates Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein and Israeli-American billionaire Miriam Adelson.
According to the authors of the report, billionaires need to be taxed more.
"Tax policy—which has the most direct impact on billionaire wealth—is perhaps the most obviously affected by the money-for-power billionaire bargain," according to the group, which cites the current Republican push to extend parts of Trump's 2017 tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy as part of a general trend in tax policy over the past four decades to decrease taxes on the wealthiest people and most profitable businesses.
"The self-reinforcing combination of booming billionaire fortunes and weakening campaign finance laws continues to threaten our democratic form of government," according to the report. "As the outcome of the last presidential campaign amply demonstrates, until billionaires pay their fair share of taxes and we put effective curbs on their political spending, this threat will only grow."
The report calls for solutions like bolstering the estate tax and implementing a wealth tax, such as the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act, a bill that was reintroduced by multiple Democratic senators in 2024. The newer version of the legislation would place a 2% annual tax on the net worth of households and trusts between $50 million and $1 billion, and impose an 1% annual surtax—so 3% tax overall—on the net worth of families and trusts that is above $1 billion.
Keep ReadingShow Less
GOP Estate Tax Plan Could Mean Over $100 Billion Giveaway for Musk and Trump Heirs
"We are seeing the rise of an oligarchy... And yet here we are talking about dismantling the estate tax, the one tax at the federal level that actually slows this concentration of wealth and power," said one expert.
Mar 27, 2025
Americans for Tax Fairness has crunched the numbers and found that a Republican push to do away with the federal estate tax—a measure that's been described as an "aristocracy prevention act"—could yield billions for the families of U.S. President Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk, according to a report from the advocacy group published Thursday.
Abolishing the estate tax, a tax on the wealth of the richest Americans when they die, could save Musk's family up to roughly $132 billion, and could save Trump's heirs up to around $2 billion, according to ATF, which made its calculation using recent estimates of each man's net worth. The top federal estate tax rate is 40%.
The group noted that "both the Trump and Musk families have undoubtedly set up elaborate estate-tax-avoidance schemes, as most superwealthy families do. Since we do not know what tax-avoidance schemes they have undertaken, we have calculated the maximum amount that would be due if the estate tax were fully repealed."
The estate tax has long been in Republicans' crosshairs.
According to Bloomberg, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D) on Wednesday endorsed the estate tax being repealed entirely, placing the repeal of the tax at the center of current negotiations over GOP efforts to approve a multitrillion-dollar tax bill that would extend provisions in Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) that primarily benefited the wealthy.
Thune was also among 45 senators who introduced a bill in February that would repeal the federal estate tax.
Trump already did wealthy Americans a favor with the passage of the TCJA, which in effect doubled the estate tax exemption amount, which as of 2025 is $14 million for individuals and twice that for married couples filing jointly. If this TCJA exemption were to expire, the exemption would drop down to $7 million per individual, meaning more millionaires would be forced to pay federal estate tax.
According to Daniel Willing, a senior wealth strategist with U.S. Bank Private Wealth Management, of all the aspects of the TCJA expiration, this drop in the estate tax exemption may have the largest impact on wealthy families.
According to ATF, "If the more generous exemption amount is retained instead of being allowed to expire, the Musk and Trump families could each save up to about $5.6 million in estate taxes."
Chuck Collins, a director at the progressive organization Institute for Policy Studies, highlighted the stakes of this kind of wealth accumulation in a video from More Perfect Union about the estate tax that was released in early March.
"We are in the second Gilded Age. You know, we are seeing the rise of an oligarchy... And yet here we are talking about dismantling the estate tax, the one tax at the federal level that actually slows this concentration of wealth and power," said Collins.
In addition to focusing on the estate tax, ATF's analysis also highlights that one of the TCJA's components that's set to expire is a set of lower tax rates on "ordinary income."
Musk had an average annual taxable income of roughly $179 million between 2013 and 2018—and 99% of it was "ordinary" income, according to the report, which cites data from ProPublica.
"Assuming he had the same average taxable income in each of the first 10 years of an extension of the Trump law's lower tax rates (and this may be a conservative assumption, since he's many times richer now), Musk could save a total of around $50 million in income taxes," per ATF.
Based on Trump's available tax returns, according to ATF, Trump received on average roughly $10 million a year in wages, taxable interest, ordinary dividends, and taxable pensions and annuities, which ATF deems his "predictable" sources of ordinary income.
"Just considering those four sources of ordinary income, over the first 10 years of an extension of his lower tax rates Trump could save a total of up to roughly $2.7 million in income taxes," according to the report.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular