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Republicans on the House Transportation Committee floated an idea to levy a new tax on every car in the United States in order to help pay for Donald Trump's budget—which features tax cuts that overwhelmingly favor the rich.
Sam Graves, who chairs the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, wanted to put a $20 annual tax on every car, and an even steeper $200 annual fee for electric vehicles and $100 for hybrids. The Missouri Republican and other members of the committee cooked up the desperate scheme to help partially pay for Trump's deficit-exploding tax cut and border security bill.
Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO).But before a national car tax could be debated at a Wednesday hearing on Capitol Hill, Politico reported that House leadership had already nixed the idea following an uproar from conservative lawmakers and mocking from Democrats across the aisle.
"Are you out of your fricking mind?” GOP Rep. Chip Roy of Texas told Politico of the car tax idea. “Like, the party of limited government is gonna go out and, ‘say we’re gonna have [a car tax]?’
Democrats slammed the idea, too.
"Of all the crazy things Republicans want to do, now they want a CAR TAX?!" Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said Tuesday in a post on X. "HELL NO."
On Wednesday, after it was reported that the tax wouldn’t be included in the GOP bill, Schumer tweeted, “lol, the republicans have already now backed off this dumb idea.”
Republicans, however, are desperate to find $880 billion worth of cuts to the federal budget to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and pass a bill by Memorial Day.
The majority of the cuts are expected to come from Medicaid—the critical government program that provides health insurance to 72 million low-income Americans.
But Republicans are having issues coming to an agreement on how to cut the hugely popular program.
Related | GOP's planned Medicaid cuts are a total self-own
So far, the idea being floated by the GOP—paring back the Medicaid expansion funding passed by Democrats as part of the Affordable Care Act—would cause up to 20 million people to lose their health insurance, according to a KFF report.
A handful of Republican lawmakers claim they won’t vote for a bill that cuts Medicaid. So will they actually vote for the legislation if it includes these proposed reductions? House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Brett Guthrie met with these GOP skeptics on Wednesday to try and convince them, according to Politico.
“My sense is that would be a cut, and I’m not in favor of that,” Rep. Nick LaLota of New York said Tuesday. “But I do want to hear more from the Guthries of the world who have studied this issue for years.”
That sure doesn’t sound like he’s a hard “No.”
Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, another GOP lawmaker who says he would not vote to cut Medicaid, now says he’d be okay with up to $500 billion in cuts from the program, Politico reported. Seriously.
Republicans’ own polling shows that cutting Medicaid would be a political disaster for the party. And a Civiqs poll conducted for Daily Kos in March found that 63% of registered voters oppose the idea of cutting Medicaid to pay for tax cuts.
So it’s interesting that Republicans were so quick to drop their car tax idea to pay for rich people’s tax cuts—but have not ruled out ripping health insurance coverage away from the poorest Americans.
Those are some seriously messed up priorities.
