EDITORIAL: Tax cuts for rich won’t enrich

June 30--Tax cuts for the rich aren't the cure to our country's problems.

Yet that is the prescription constantly coming from Republicans in Washington, most recently in the disastrous Senate plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The legislation would gut health care coverage for the most vulnerable Americans in order to finance $1 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthiest citizens and corporations.

The top 1 percent of households, earning $875,000 or more, would be in line for an average tax cut of more than $45,000 a year, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Those in the top 0.1 percent of earners, making $5 million or more, would receive an average tax cut of nearly $250,000.

The proposal would make those and other tax cuts while slashing Medicaid spending and making decent health insurance impossible for lower-income and older citizens to afford. A Congressional Budget Office analysis found the measure would result in 22 million fewer people having health insurance by 2026, just a minor improvement over the health care plan passed by the House in March.

It is no wonder that support for the Senate measure was declining at the writing of this editorial, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell delaying a scheduled vote. Yet Florida Gov. Rick Scott was in Washington this week not to seek to improve the legislation for most Floridians, but to fight for the tax cuts benefiting a small sliver of the state population -- including himself.

Politico reported that the measure would provide a windfall tax cut of anywhere from $250,000 to $500,000 to Scott, a former hospital executive. The median income in Florida is less than $50,000 a year -- and those on the lower end of the income spectrum would suffer disproportionate harm from the bill.

Florida lawmakers failed to expand Medicaid as allowed under the Affordable Care Act, but Medicaid still covers about 4 million Floridians. Medicaid covers about half of childbirths and 70 percent of senior citizens in nursing homes here, the Palm Beach Post reported.

In addition, about 1.7 million Floridians signed up for health insurance in 2017 under the Affordable Care Act's exchanges -- the most of any state. Scott should be fighting to ensure their coverage remains affordable and accessible, which both the Senate and House health plans utterly fail to do.

Certainly improvements should be made to the Affordable Care Act and its insurance exchanges. Instead, the White House has worked to destabilize those exchanges and then disingenuously blamed Democrats for problems.

Instead of the closed-door process in which the Senate bill was crafted, Democrats and Republicans must work together in the open to make health-care fixes that are widely beneficial. Tax cuts for the rich are nothing of the sort.

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