Republicans are on the verge of passing a $1.5 trillion tax reform bill that would raise taxes for millions of middle-class families and cost 13 million people their health insurance—all to pay for massive corporate and upper-income tax cuts. A tax reform package has already passed the House; the Senate could vote on its bill as soon as Thursday. And yet, despite the fact that this legislation represents an enormous transfer of wealth up the income ladder, and has progressed with a shocking minimum of democratic transparency and accountability, it has not been treated as a massive scandal by the media.

We’ve been here before. Back in July, when Senate Republicans were attempting to repeal Obamacare, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s chief insight was that the success of the bill depended largely on two factors: speed and stealth. With a news media distracted by an overwhelming number of scandals emanating from the White House, not to mention daily Twitter outbursts from President Donald Trump, McConnell had cover to craft sweeping legislation. And he very nearly succeeded in getting it passed.

With tax reform, Republicans are following a similar strategy, using non-stop crises as cover to push an odious bill through the House and Senate while the media plays Whack-a-Mole with the news of the day. They have also been abetted by a media that has failed to learn the main lesson of the Obamacare repeal effort, which is that the GOP is no longer a normal political party that is beholden to the welfare of voters. It has become so bankrupt that it is willing to use any means to pass unpopular, highly damaging legislation that will have little positive impact on anyone but a very thin slice of people at the top. But the coverage does not reflect that bedrock dynamic; instead we often see stories that focus on the GOP’s desperate need to pass “major” legislation before the end of the year, even if that legislation amounts to daylight robbery.

To be fair, Republicans enjoy two advantages they didn’t have when they attempted to repeal Obamacare over the summer. The first is that the last month has featured a number of high-profile, evolving news stories—most notably the fallout from the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment scandal—that have shifted to new figures on a practically hourly basis. This allows a less explosive issue like tax policy to fly below the radar. On Sunday’s Meet The Press, for instance, both Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Republican Senator Rob Portman spent the majority of their time answering questions about sexual harassment and Roy Moore, respectively—both had to push Chuck Todd to give them extra time to discuss tax reform.



The other advantage is that the effects of the tax reform bill are more complicated than the effects of Obamacare repeal. Obamacare repeal had stark repercussions that activists, politicians, and the media could latch onto: It would cost 24 million people their health insurance. The tax reform bill, meanwhile, effectively sticks middle-class taxpayers with the bill for massive corporate tax cuts after giving those same taxpayers modest income tax decreases. The mechanisms involved are complicated—tax policy combined with the arcane rules of the Senate do not exactly make for thrilling cable news coverage. And because the House and Senate bills are so different, journalists and networks have struggled to convey what’s happening.

