Early Saturday morning, Senate Republicans finally managed to successfully vote on a tax bill that loots the country for the sake the wealthiest Americans.

Republicans have been struggling to justify any aspect of this bill. While they call it a tax cut, it actually raises taxes for most Americans over the next decade, eliminates numerous credits designed to help middle and working class people like teachers and students, and adds over $1 trillion to the deficit, which is something Republicans really care about when Democrats are in power. The University of Chicago polled 38 economists, and 37 said it would blow up the country's debt. The one guy who responded that it wouldn't later said he misread the question, and, yeah, those other 37 are right.

So, Paul Ryan and Senator Rob Portman released a joint letter signed by 137 economists endorsing the tax overhaul. Unfortunately, their math is off again. The Intercept investigated the names that appear on that letter, and not everyone on there is really an economist. In fact at least one person seems to not exist at all. Reporter Lee Fang writes:

One of the signatories, Gil Sylvia of the University of Georgia, does not have a biography page or any online trace of employment at the university. A university representative told The Intercept that no one with the name Gil Sylvia is employed there. There is a Gil Sylvia working as a marine resource economist at Oregon State University. He did not respond to a request for comment. (If you are the Gil Sylvia who signed this letter and exist, email me at the address below.)

A lot of the rest of the list is similarly sketchy. There are professors that Ryan and Portman claim are working academics when in fact they're retired. Several are people who stand to benefit from the cuts, like in-house economists for Bank of America and financial services firms. Several are members of organizations like a Koch-run anti-tax group or organizations with ties to Paul Ryan's political team. One signatory, John P. Eleazarian, is listed as an economist with the American Economic Association. But according to The Intercept, the AEA is an open-membership organization where members pay dues in order to read AEA journals, and Eleazarian is actually a lawyer who lost his license and can't practice law in California.

Another name on the list belongs to Seth Bied, an office assistant, not an economist, at the New York State Tax Department who said through a spokesperson that he doesn't remember agreeing to or signing the letter.

This fits in with the overall Republican strategy for getting this bill passed: subterfuge and BS. GOP senators essentially wrote the bill in secret, not making it available to the public until just before the vote. They've deliberately misrepresented it as a tax cut for the middle class and even worked under a budget procedure that allows them to skate by with 51 votes and no option for a filibuster.

And they aren't done: Marco Rubio has already admitted that Republicans plan to cut Social Security and Medicare once they're done with taxes because, hey, someone has to pay for all that money going to billionaires and corporations. So expect the GOP to break out more ouija boards to find someone, anyone, to make them look legitimate.