Submitted by Paul Davis
Candidate for Kansas’ second congressional district

Today the United States House of Representatives gave final approval to a federal tax bill that bears a remarkably similar resemblance to Gov. Sam Brownback’s failed signature tax policy.

Much like the Brownback plan that a bipartisan supermajority of Kansas lawmakers recently repealed, the House tax plan creates an LLC loophole, explodes the national debt, and concentrates 83 percent of its benefits on corporations and the country’s wealthiest individuals.

Congress had a wonderful opportunity to reform the tax code to help lift the burden on middle class Kansans who have been left behind in this economy as corporations raked in record profits. Instead, they passed a Brownback-style tax giveaway for their wealthiest campaign donors. It will explode the national debt, incentivize corporations to ship American jobs overseas, and strip healthcare from roughly 30,000 Kansans who live in the second congressional district.

Nonpartisan score keepers project that the tax plan passed today will ultimately raise taxes on every Kansas family earning less than $75,000 in order to pay for permanent corporate tax cuts. Meanwhile, the top one percent of Americans will receive an average tax cut of $51,140.

Kansans learned the hard way that we couldn’t create jobs or move our state forward with a tax code that was upside down and backwards. The same holds true for our nation. Congress should go back to the drawing board, learn from Kansas’ mistakes, and pass tax reform that prioritizes middle class families above special interest lobbyists.