
The West Virginia senator wanted to rush the GOP tax bill before people could find out how bad it is. But even she doesn't understand it.

West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito is very proud that she and her fellow Republicans passed their tax scam in the dead of night, without the support of a single Democrat or the majority of the American people.

But as for what the bill will actually do? She's not sure.

Capito told CNN's Bill Weir that she read the bill and believes all the standard GOP talking points about how it largely benefits the middle class (it doesn't) and will create more jobs (it won't) and that mega-corporations will use their massive cuts to pay workers (they're not planning to).


But does she comprehend how the bill actually works? No, she doesn't.

WEIR: Have you read the entire bill? CAPITO: I did. WEIR: Yeah? All 550-something pages? CAPITO: I waded through it. I can't tell you that I comprehended every single little part of the tax code, to be honest with you. But the impacts were very clear, and the big impacts of small business, better corporate rates to make us more competitive and middle-class tax cuts were just glaring when I was reading it.

Perhaps if Capito did comprehend the tax code, she would know that those supposedly clear impacts simply do not exist. The tax scam overwhelmingly favors America's wealthiest people and biggest corporations, while giving small and temporary tax cuts to the middle class that will be phased out to pay for the permanent corporate giveaways.

And that's something Capito should understand. After all, earlier this month she insisted Republicans had to ram through their deeply unpopular bill "as quickly as possible" specifically because the more time people have to look at it, the less they like it.

That was her concern about her fellow senators, but it also happens to be true of the American people. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News polls found just this week that support for the bill, which was never high to begin with, has plummeted in the last two months.

And not only that, but support for the entire Republican Party has dropped, with American voters believing Democrats are better suited to handle tax reform.

No wonder Capito wanted her party to ram the bill through.

As for the fantasy that corporate tax cuts will turn into benefits for workers — despite CEOs saying they'll use their new government handouts to enrich their shareholders instead?

Well, Capito refuses to believe that.

"And since you went through it all — there's nothing in there that guarantees that corporations have to trickle this money down to workers, right?" Weir asked her. "They're sitting on piles of cash right now and haven't done it. What makes you think they're going to do it now?"

They just will, was Capito's answer.

Those beleaguered corporations already sitting on piles of cash haven't shared their record profits with workers because of the supposedly oppressive tax rate, but they certainly will now, all evidence to the contrary.

Perhaps Capito needs to give the bill another read until she really does comprehend it in its entirety.