On MSNBC this week, Lloyd Doggett sounded a tone of resignation while trying to puncture the seeming inevitability of Republicans’ legislation to overhaul the American tax system.
“I view the bill as a giant political life preserver for Republicans who’ve been unable to get anything else done this year and haven’t given a lot of thought to the real impact on Americans of adding so much debt, a trillion so dollars,” Doggett said.
As his party’s ranking member on the House Ways and Means tax-writing panel, Doggett, D-San Antonio, is cast in the role as a main Washington critic of the GOP tax plan, which is moving swiftly. and perhaps inexorably, to final passage. The House advanced its version on Nov. 16.
After the Thanksgiving break, the Senate will take up its own draft of a significantly changed tax system, which differs in some ways but, like the House version, aims to cut taxes by more than $1 trillion over a decade and simplify the tax code. Doggett and the Democrats argue that both versions overwhelmingly favor the wealthy.
