'Tax Reform' and the 2018 Campaign

Congressman Lewis,

I see that your colleagues in the Senate managed to pass their version of a 'tax reform' bill at around 2:00 AM Saturday morning, using an open and transparent process in which last-minute amendments were hastily scribbled in the margins, and Senate Democrats received notification about amendments to the bill from Washington D.C. lobbyists:

This is so bad. We have just gotten list of amendments to be included in bill NOT from our R colleagues, but from lobbyists downtown. None of us have seen this list, but lobbyists have it. Need I say more? Disgusting. And we probably will not even be given time to read them. pic.twitter.com/Mn0i56JeZg

— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) December 1, 2017

I believe this is what your president refers to as 'draining the swamp'.

Although I don't know everything that's in this bill --- because literally no one does, including the 51 Republicans in the Senate who voted for it --- I feel compelled to write to you about it immediately.  I feel this urgency because I'm confident that, like the last two Republican bills to destroy health care in America, the more people learn about it, the less popular it will become (and it's already pretty darn unpopular, with one poll showing only 25% support).  And since I believe that Paul Ryan has the same steadfast commitment to transparency and the democratic process as Senate Republicans do, I anticipate that he'll try to ram through a vote to approve the Senate bill as quickly as possible.  Perhaps even before I can finish writing this letter.

Now, I expect you'll vote for this awful bill, because Republicans believe that they need a 'win', and because you expressed great pride about the similarly awful bill that you voted for in the House.  So instead of asking you to vote against the Senate bill or anything similar that might be devised via reconciliation, I'm simply writing to ask which parts of the bill you believe will be most helpful to you during your upcoming re-election campaign.  Choose one or more from the following:

• Jason Lewis voted to increase deficit by anything from $1.6 trillion to $1.8 trillion by 2027, if the alleged economic growth spurred by the tax cuts doesn't materialize --- and anything from $500 billon to $1.3 trillion even if it does.
• Jason Lewis voted to eliminate exemptions for children and other dependents.
• Jason Lewis voted to eliminate the deduction for teachers who buy supplies for their classroom (House bill only).
• Jason Lewis voted to slash corporate tax rates from 35% to 20% --- less than the rate many middle-income families pay.
• Jason Lewis voted to slash taxes for millionaires, while Americans earning less than $75,000 are more likely to see a tax increase by 2027 than a cut.
• Jason Lewis voted to authorize oil drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.
• Jason Lewis voted to end the individual mandate of the Afforable Care Act, eliminating health insurance for an estimated 13 million Americans and increasing premiums by 10% for everyone else.  One expert predicted this would lead to "ballooning premiums that will crush millions of families".
• Jason Lewis voted to cut $25 billion from Medicare to pay more more tax cuts for the richest of the rich.
• And Jason Lewis voted for all of these things in order to spur the economy to a mere 0.1% increased growth rate over each of the next 10 years, or less than 1% total by 2027.

Please get back to me ASAP and let me know which of these items you would most like for voters to have in mind when they enter the voting booth next November.

Update: Jason responds.