The University of Chicago recently asked 38 of the nation's most respected economists to assess the Republican tax plan, and to predict its impact on our national debt and our rate of economic growth.

The debt will explode, they said. The economy will sputter.

Republicans are rushing this bill, just as they did with the Obamacare repeal, without asking for feedback from experts like these. They want to muscle this through because they know honest analysis will expose its monstrous flaws.

Imagine the questions: Why increase taxes on families earning $75,000 or less? Why drain money from states like New Jersey that already pay heavy subsidies to other states? Why reserve the bulk of benefits for the nation's richest?

The Republicans really have only one argument: Give more money to corporations, and they will invest it in new jobs and grant raises to their workers. That boom will generate enough extra revenue to cover the cost of the $1.5 trillion in cuts.

It's an economic theory that just won't die.

So, the University of Chicago surveyed economists from the nation's top universities, and took care to include conservatives and liberals.

Will economic growth be "substantially higher" under this plan? Just 2 percent agreed, while 51 percent said they "disagree" or "strongly disagree."

So much for those middle-class pay hikes. The problem with the trickle-down theory is that business leaders don't have to spend this new money on their workers. They can give it to their shareholders, or increase the obscene salaries they pay themselves.

Gary Cohn, Trump's top economic adviser, recently asked a group of 60 business leaders whether they would use this new bounty to create jobs. Five hands went up. Awkward.

In a second question, the economists were asked if this plan would lead to "substantially higher" debt.

They responded with a primal scream, as if the ship of state were about to hit an iceberg. Of the 38 surveyed, 37 warned that the debt would balloon. And the one who disagreed, Stanford University's Liran Einav, said later that he misread the question, and changed his vote.

The Republican Party has achieved something remarkable: They are cutting taxes, the political equivalent to serving a chocolate dessert. But their plan is so bad that most people hate it.

Polls show that Americans oppose this plan by wide margins. Realtors warn it will lead to big plunges in home values. A national survey of small business owners found that even they opposed it. In New Jersey, the Chamber of Commerce opposed it, as did all our Republicans in Congress, with the exception of Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-3rd).

Keep in mind, too, that this is just Stage One. Republican leaders like Speaker Paul Ryan say the next step is to cut spending, especially on entitlement programs. The Congressional Budget Office warned recently that, as drafted, this plan would force automatic cuts in Medicare next year of $25 billion.

Trump still won't release his taxes, but he was asked in September what he stands to gain: "I don't benefit," he said. "In fact, very very strongly, as you see, I think there's very little benefit for people of wealth."

It becomes tiresome to say this again, but he's lying, and we cannot ever treat that as normal. Forbes puts his net worth at $3.5 billion, which means the cuts in the estate tax alone would save him more than $1 billion. That's just the start.

This is obscene. And it exposes the dark influence of wealthy donors in Washington. With this bill, they are making their move, pinching the rest of us so that they squeeze even more juice from the orange.

The only hope now is that at least a handful of Republicans in the Senate step up to this moment in history. It could go either way, and that is both sad and scary.

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Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or call (973) 836-4909. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.