The Top 5 Most Absurd Responses To The GOP’s $1.5 Trillion Tax Cut

In the biggest legislative victory of the less than a year-old Trump presidency, the House passed the GOP’s comprehensive tax reform bill on Tuesday and the Senate quickly followed suit. The $1.5 trillion tax cut passed 227-203 in the House and 51-48 in the Senate, without a single vote from the opposition party, which has uniformly condemned the bill in increasingly hysterical terms. To commemorate the passage of the bill, below are the top five most unhinged responses to Republican tax reform, two of which were earned by one particularly distraught Democratic leader.

1. Nancy Pelosi declares that tax reform “does violence to the vision of our Founders.”

In a speech on the House floor on Tuesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi pretended to care about the Founding Fathers and the national debt, declaring that the bill “does violence to the vision of our Founders” and invoking “the children” as a reason to vote against the “immoral” tax “scam.”

“This GOP tax scam is simply theft, monumental, brazen theft from the American middle class and from every person who aspires to reach it,” Pelosi said. “The GOP tax scam is not a vote for an investment in growth or jobs. It is a vote to install a permanent plutocracy in our nation. They’ll be cheering that later. It does violence to the vision of our Founders. It disrespects the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform, who are a large part of our middle class and to whom we owe a future worthy of their sacrifice. And it betrays the future and betrays the aspirations of our children. It demands, it morally demands a no vote from every member of this house of the people.”

2. Protesters chant “Don’t kill us!”

The Daily Mail highlighted the moment: “A wave of protesters provided one of the biggest bursts of emotion. One small group yelled out ‘Kill the bill, don’t kill us!’ as the final vote was being taken.”

In response to the hysterics, Vice President Mike Pence was forced to call for order. “The Sergeant at Arms will restore order in the gallery,” said Pence.

3. Rosie O’Donnell offers $2 million bribe to Senators, violates federal law.

Leading up to the Senate vote Tuesday night, former comedian and ardent anti-Trumper Rosie O’Donnell sent out a series of tweets to Republican Sens. Susan Collins and Jeff Flake offering $2 million if they vote against the bill.

Prior to the gracious offer, Rosie told Collins she’s “NO WOMAN” and that she’s voting to “KILL AMERICANS.”

The only problem with Rosie’s generous $2 million offer, of course, is that it violates federal law. “Under 18 U.S. Code §201, offering $4 million in bribes to senators to influence a vote is punishable with up to $12m in fines and/or imprisonment for as much as 15 years​,” tweeted Jeff Jacoby.

When Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro tweeted that Trump would have his face “carved into Mount Rushmore by Friday” if he investigated Rosie, she responded in standard Rosie style, writing “suck my d**k ben.” Here was Shapiro’s response:

4. Chuck Schumer prophesies dark, dark days ahead and Republicans plagued by regret.

Just before the vote in the House, the other key congressional Democratic leader, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, went full doom and gloom and warned Republicans that they would soon “rue the day” they voted to reduce Americans’ taxes. The $1.5 trillion in tax cut “blows a hole in our deficit” he said hyperbolically.

“Republicans will rue the day that they pass this tax bill because it’s so unfair to the middle class,” said Schumer. “It so blows a hole in our deficit, it so threatens Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They will rue the day.”

5. Nancy Pelosi invokes “Armageddon.”

​Leading up to the vote, Pelosi resorted to the “end of the world” scenario, literally. A little over a week before the vote, Pelosi appeared on television to declare that the Republicans’ bill was in fact “the end of the world… Armageddon.”

Pelosi made the comment in response to being asked if the Democrats were over-hyping the negatives of the bill because “many people are getting a very modest tax cut … and it’s not the end of the world?”

“No, it is the end of the world,” said Pelosi. “The debate on health care is life, death. This is Armageddon. This is a very big deal, because you know why? There’s really a very hard way to come back from this. They take us further, more deeply into debt. What can you do but raise taxes? They throw a few crumbs to the middle class. What they give with one hand they take away in bounty with the other.”

Honorable Mention: Democrats spread news so fake even The Washington Post calls foul.

A few weeks before the vote, rising Democratic star and many on the left’s favored 2020 presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris spread the false claim that all middle class families making less than $86,000 a year would get a tax increase. The claim ended up getting slammed even by the left-leaning Washington Post, who gave Harris and the Democrats who produced the fake talking point Four Pinocchios.

“On average, middle class families earning less than $86,000 would see a tax increase under the Republican ‘tax reform’ plan,” claimed Harris in a tweet on October 27 that she was eventually forced to delete.

The talking point came from a document put out by the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, which The Washington Post rightly describes as “essentially the communications arm of Senate Democrats,” which distorted another claim that about 8 million households making that much might see that increase. The reality, the Post explained, is that a vast majority of people would receive a tax cut, as Republicans have been saying all along.

“Only a small percentage (6.5%) of the nearly 122 million households in the bottom three quintiles will actually face a tax increase. Meanwhile, more than 97 million (80%) will receive a tax cut,” the Post reports. “Doing the math the same way the JEC staff did, we come up with an average tax cut of about $450 for those 97 million households.”

The Daily Wire’s Hank Berrien notes that the cynical Democrats were forced to update their report to correct the error, but still refused to acknowledge that most people would enjoy tax cuts.