The Republican tax reform bill didn’t just cut or simplify taxes — it also made them fairer.

First, it set lower rates for middle-class taxpayers. But by limiting the deduction for state and local taxes to just $10,000 — far more than most people pay — the bill also made sure that the wealthy pay their fair share.

This change is part of the reason the Republican tax reform bill actually made the tax code more progressive than it had been previously , according to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.

This change has another salutary effect. It prevents states and localities from exploiting other states’ federal taxpayers in order to keep taxes down for their own wealthiest residents — usually people earning well over $200,000 per year. It is not uncommon in high-tax states, such as New Jersey, for officials to argue that state and local income-tax hikes don’t matter so much, because residents can deduct the additional payments on their federal taxes, with big savings at much higher marginal tax rates.

The new limit set on this deduction has had a very interesting effect on Democratic politicians. They are usually the first to shriek about tax cuts for the wealthy. But now that the federal tax code will no longer shield their own states’ wealthy residents from the high taxes they have imposed, these Democrat have suddenly become the preeminent champions of the nation’s wealthiest 1 percent.

New Jersey's Phil Murphy is one of the Democratic governors who scrambled to protect the rich from paying their fair share of federal taxes. His idea for cheating Uncle Sam was a law allowing residents to write off most of their high property taxes as “charitable deductions.” Murphy wasn’t alone in cooking up such an idea: Governors Andrew Cuomo of New York and Dan Malloy of Connecticut, both Democrats, signed laws creating similar tax-evasion schemes in their respective states. And quite a few other Democratic states, including California, considered but never enacted such dubious ideas.

It’s just as well, because last week, the IRS made clear that such schemes won’t fly. It issued a new rule to clarify that tax payments are tax payments, no matter what the states choose to call them. Although the details are complicated, the effect is to render any deduction resulting from such a scheme useless.

In the meantime, Democratic officials from four states have launched a pathetic lawsuit against the new federal tax law, asserting that it violates the Tenth and Sixteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Their case is, to put it charitably, risible. Their reasoning is weak, and their complaint is understandably light on relevant legal citations. In fact, the lawsuit appears more a feeble attempt to mollify high-income taxpayers than a legitimate attempt to overturn the law. It's just more performative #Resistance to President Trump, which seems to be in high demand among limousine liberals.

Still, this should be illuminating for undecided voters. Democrats are not sincere when they cry about tax cuts for the rich. Rather, they are just upset that the tax cuts aren’t going to the right rich or that taxes aren’t being imposed in a way that forces low-tax states to subsidize high-tax states.

Once again, the wisdom of the tax reform bill reasserts itself. Not only is it creating jobs and opportunities for people all over the nation, but it also has all the right people whining and suing in order to protect the rich from a fairer, simpler tax code.