We’re in the home stretch for the Republican ‘Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’ and, as its passage now seems all-but-inevitable despite the opposition of every congressional Democrat and a majority of the American public, now is a good time to step back and look at just how egregious this ‘tax heist’ is.

Somehow, congressional Republicans have managed to craft a tax bill so unfair that 55% of Americans disapprove of it. That’s a truly impressive feat for a bill that will lower taxes for many Americans (at least initially). But the reason why the bill is so disliked is not too hard to identify. Let’s take a look at some of the numbers.

Under this bill, the top 1% of earners will immediately see nearly 3.5 times the amount of tax relief compared to the middle class and ultimately reap more than half of all the tax breaks by 2027. The poorest would see essentially no benefit, while about a third of middle-class Americans would see their taxes increase by 2027.

Anticipated effects of the GOP tax bill by 2027. Credit: Vox

These effects are appallingly unfair and they draw a stark contrast to what most Americans think tax policy should look like. That’s because more than 60% of Americans have consistently said the richest pay too little in taxes. It’s no wonder why, since inequality in America is already obscene. The top 1 percent of households in America now own more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined (a higher proportion than at any point in the last 50 years) and the top 1 percent of US adults now earns on average 81 times more than the bottom 50 percent. In fact, the bottom half of earners have seen essentially zero income growth over the last 34 years.

An overview of income growth in the US over the last 34 years. Credit: Chicago Booth Review/Piketty et al. 2016

Yet, Republicans insist that what the economy needs is more tax breaks for the richest. And the income tax ‘reform’ isn’t even the worst part of the GOP bill. Although this bill overwhelmingly benefits the wealthy with changes to the income tax code, those changes don’t hold a candle to the giveaway corporations will receive through the massive reduction in the corporate tax rate. Some economists (echoed ad nauseum by talking heads on the Fox Business channel) claim that corporate taxes are too high and American corporations have trouble competing with their international rivals. But, is this true? Not really. Although the US has a higher corporate tax rate than many other countries on paper, most studies of the effective tax rate for corporations agree that the rate American companies actually pay is competitive with other countries.

The current economic reality in the country undercuts this claim, too. American corporations are reaping record profits and stock indices are at all-time highs. In light of this, it would be tough for an honest economist to make a case that the corporate tax burden is a significant drag on the economy. And it’s not like Americans are blowing up the phones and email inboxes of staffers on Capitol Hill with demands for reductions in the corporate tax rate. In fact, Americans overwhelmingly say that corporations pay too little in taxes. And the number of Americans who feel that tax reform should even be a priority for Congress is minuscule: just 1–2%. In short, the general public has not been clamoring for tax reform. Probably because they realize that, when it comes, tax reform will not be favorable to them; an all-too-prescient fear in this moment.

Nearly 70% of Americans say that corporations pay too little in taxes. (source) Still, the GOP tax bill would slash the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%.

The general public, however, doesn’t have much of a voice in the halls of Congress these days. To see who does have the ear of congressional Republicans, one only needs to “follow the money.” That’s not hard to do with a bill that would result in such a massive redistribution of the tax burden away from the wealthy and large corporations and onto the backs of the middle-class. Through relentless lobbying and huge amounts of campaign cash, the rich have paid for Congress to listen to them and ignore the rest of us. This bill is only the latest and most blatant demand for a return on their investment. And boy is it going to be a good one.

The $1.5 trillion hole that this tax reform bill will blow in the deficit must be made up somewhere and sometime. Republicans are betting that even if Democrats were to retake Congress and the presidency in 2018 and 2020, they aren’t going to have the balls to alienate their wealthy donors by asking them to pay their fair share in taxes. Instead, the only solution we’re likely to be told, is a series of cuts to social service programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

We’ve already seen the beginning of this process as Congress failed to renew funding for the Child Health Insurance Program or CHIP, which expired in September. That’s the federal program created in 1997, which helped decrease the number of children without health insurance coverage by two-thirds in the ensuing two decades. It covers 9 million children, costs around $14 billion a year and was the result of a bi-partisan effort between the late Ted Kennedy and senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT). Hatch, who says the program has done “a terrific job”, nevertheless lamented the lack of available money for its continuation at the same time that he voted for a tax reform bill which is expected to cost nearly $1.5 trillion over 10 years. That’s a level of dishonesty and cognitive dissonance that is impressive even for a senator.

The final version of the GOP tax bill is expected to repeal the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act, which would cause 14 million more Americans to be uninsured and health insurance premiums to rise by around 80% by 2027 for those in the individual market. (source)

There’s a particularly apt term for what Republicans are doing with this tax bill and the nascent dismantling of our meager ‘welfare’ state. Democrats and liberal pundits may be afraid to use it, but I won’t hesitate to. These are acts of class warfare — pure and simple. The wealthiest and greediest Americans, having commandeered the reigns of the Republican party and now the federal government, have with this bill dispensed with any pretense based in economic theory and are merely trying to further line their own pockets. This is the latest and most naked example of how our federal government has shifted from being a democratic republic in any real sense of the term and is now speeding past oligarchy and approaching kleptocracy. If (or perhaps when) this bill passes, it should be a wake-up call for all Americans who still believe in government “for the people, by the people” and not government by the wealthy few to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us.