Your pay raise is getting closer

This week, the House and the Senate start reconciling the different version of the Republican tax reform bill.

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What apparently will not change is the idea that there is no need to worry about the huge amount of money the bill will add to the federal deficit, because cutting taxes on businesses will put more money into workers’ pockets.

And it’s great that bosses are going to be cheerfully throwing more money at their employees. But there are critics of this tax plan who claim there is a hidden agenda. They say the tax reform plan is designed to deliberately create a budget crisis that will trigger automatic cuts in programs that Republicans have never liked anyway, including Medicare.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine was actually a holdout on the Senate version of tax reform until she got a guarantee that Medicare would not be cut to make up the difference.

“I don’t want seniors to have the anxiety of wondering whether the tax bill somehow is going to trigger a cut in Medicare. I’m absolutely confident. I have it in writing, a statement by both Mitch McConnell and Speaker Ryan.”

OK, but here’s what Speaker Ryan said last week on a Denver talk show.

“We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit.”

And he specifically mentioned healthcare.

“Frankly, it’s the healthcare entitlements that are the big drivers of our debt, so we spend more time on the health care entitlements—because that’s really where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.”

Now, again, Senator Collins has that promise.

“I have written correspondence…”

But that sounds a little like the latest version of: “if you like your healthcare you can keep it…”

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