“Largest tax cuts in history: This bill prevents the largest tax hike in American history by protecting Medicaid benefits for those who need them, and exposing Medicaid fraud, such as the 1.4 million illegal immigrants who stole from American taxpayers. It also creates no tax on tips and no tax on overtime, putting more money back into the pockets of hardworking Americans.”
— U.S. Rep. Mike Collins, May 25, 2025.
By Jack Bernard, contributing columnist
PEACHTREE CITY, Ga. | What U.S. Rep. Mike Collins does not say is that the Medicaid cuts that he and his GOP buddies have approved have nothing to do with fraud. The cuts are simply going to dump over 10 million low-income people into the uninsured category, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Likewise, the bill contains cuts to SNAP, the program providing food to low-income families, and many kids.
The plan that Collins endorses has $3.8 trillion in tax cuts, while increasing spending for the military and other Trump talking points. And the benefits would go to reduce taxes for the wealthy, that is, those people making over $400,000 a year. Richer folks would get a reduction of $60,000 annually versus only $500 for the least affluent.
Under Trump in his first term, our deficits reached record highs—the exact opposite of what he promised when his first set of tax cuts were passed. But Trump ignored the past when proposing these newest cuts. Our nation is setting itself up for virtual bankruptcy.
Of course, we now have a President who does not believe that bankruptcy is bad. After all, Trump’s own private enterprises have gone bankrupt six times. It is startling that any casino company can go belly up. But Trump Hotels and Casinos Resorts, Inc. repeatedly filed for bankruptcy whereby “shareholders lose much of their equity.” Trump personally did just fine, walking away as usual with his personal wealth intact, while blaming everyone else for his own failures.
And now Trump wants to bankrupt our government through outrageous tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy while increasing spending for his pet projects. Of course, he is shifting some of the cost to tariffs, a regressive tax that most Americans do not understand is a tax which falls more on the common person than the rich. And, according to the nonprofit group Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF), the MAGA folks in Congress want to make things even worse.
Republicans are pushing a reconciliation bill which “would make massive cuts to Medicaid, nutrition for children, and other vital programs while using procedural tricks to hide the true cost of their multi-trillion-dollar tax cuts for billionaires.” The projected bill “treats extending tax cuts that are set to expire as having no cost despite their near $5 trillion price tag.”
ATF has also done an analysis of tax rates paid in 2022 by 55 large corporations, finding that they pay less than undocumented immigrants. For example, Tesla made nearly $5.5 billion in profits but paid no federal taxes at all. Neither did Atlanta-based Delta Airlines, even though they made nearly $2 billion. In total, these 55 firms had “income of nearly $200 billion but paid just $3.7 billion in federal income tax.”
President Ronald Reagan once stated: “When a business or an individual spends more than it makes, it goes bankrupt. When government does it, it sends you the bill. And when government does it for 40 years, the bill comes in two ways: higher taxes and inflation.” Ronald Reagan understood. The MAGAs do not.
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