November 29, 2017 03:03 PM UTC

Rep. Scott Tipton Just Makes Stuff Up About GOP Tax Bill

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: We’d be remiss if we failed to note again that Rep. Scott Tipton’s vote for the House GOP tax bill was also a vote to eliminate the wind power production tax credit, which plays a key role in high-paying jobs at the Vestas wind tower manufacturing plant located in his district. We have yet to see Tipton comment about this rather important detail, but we understand why he omitted it from this op-ed.

Since this wasn’t about, you know, the facts.

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In a guest op-ed in the Glenwood Springs Post-Independent today, Rep. Scott Tipton of Cortez calls out strongly for passage of the so-called “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.” Strongly, but missing the one thing his pitch really needed: accuracy.

In my travels around the 3rd Congressional District, I have met and spoken with many hardworking Coloradans who are living paycheck-to-paycheck. They are single parents who work two jobs, seven days a week, but still cannot pay their bills. They are small business owners on Main Street, who are weighed down by federal regulations and a tax code that punishes them for being successful. They are families who are forced to make the difficult decision of paying their mortgage or putting food on the table.

Despite the pleas for help from their constituents, some lawmakers in Washington voted to keep our current, harmful tax code in place. There are some in Congress who would prefer to preserve tax loopholes for special interests and tell Americans how they should spend their money, rather than deliver relief for families and job creators. These are the same individuals who have characterized the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act as a tax cut for the rich, despite independent analysis that shows it will help Americans at every tax level, especially Americans at the low and middle-income level. [Pols emphasis]

As we have discussed repeatedly as the GOP tax bill has been under debate in the U.S. House and now the Senate, the claim that this is meant in any meaningful way to “help Americans at the low and middle-income level,” is simply not true. Referring again to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center’s analysis of the House bill, which is the version Tipton is extolling in today’s op-ed, the facts are clear:

The House bill that passed on Thursday could save Trump and his family over $1 billion, per an NBC News analysis. Key provisions like eliminating the alternative minimum tax (which cost Trump $31 million in his leaked 2005 return), ending the estate tax, cutting the top tax rate for pass-through businesses, and raising the top income threshold for individuals, all directly benefit the rich…a growing minority would see a tax increase over the years, especially if temporary provisions in the bill expire. By 2027, the bottom 40 percent of earners would see almost no average change in their tax bill at all versus current law. Nearly half of the bill’s benefits would go to the top 1 percent. [Pols emphasis]

As 9NEWS correctly noted in their comprehensive look at the Senate version of the tax bill, the numbers are even worse with the legislation currently under debate–with over 50% of taxpayers paying more in 2027 than they do today, and the overwhelming majority of the benefits still going to the wealthiest Americans.

But no matter which version of the GOP tax bill you look at, Tipton’s claim that “it will help Americans at every tax level, especially Americans at the low and middle-income level” has no factual basis. The only people being “especially” helped by this bill are wealthy individuals and businesses. It’s possible that Scott Tipton, whose net worth in 2014 was estimated somewhere north of $6 million, is far enough out of touch with “middle-income” Americans that he imagines himself to be one.

But he’s not. The majority of voters in Tipton’s district, on the other hand, are.

To whom Scott Tipton just told a whopper of a lie.