Big, billionaire boosting budgets: Republicans in Washington and Raleigh do their bosses’ bidding

The concern probably never occurred to you, but if it did, you can now put your mind at rest. Research confirms that the current era – our own modern-day version of the Roaring 20’s — remains a great time to be a billionaire. A new report from the global nonprofit Oxfam provides the numbers.

According to the report, which the Oxfam people gleaned from that chronicle of the ruling class, Forbes, the vast and immoral inequality that dominates the U.S. economy has reached truly stunning levels.

Among the key findings:

• Despite recent tariff-related market turmoil, the 10 richest U.S. billionaires saw their wealth increase by $365 billion over the past 12 months.
• It would take 726,000 years for 10 U.S. workers with median earnings to make that much money.
• If the wealth gains of the 10 richest billionaires were taxed like income from work, they would owe a collective $135 billion in taxes.
• A modest three percent tax on wealth over $1 billion would raise over $50 billion from the 10 richest U.S. billionaires alone. This is enough to cover the entire federal rental assistance budget or a year of food assistance for 22.5 million people.

In other words, life remains good for, alphabetically (an ordering system that would no doubt cause most of these men to cringe): Steve Ballmer, Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, Warren Buffet, Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, Larry Page, Jim Walton, Rob Walton, and Mark Zuckerberg.

What’s more, the chance that American elected leaders might actually pursue any policy options remotely akin to what those radicals at Oxfam suggest has been firmly put to rest for the foreseeable future.

Indeed, thanks to votes last week in both the U.S. and North Carolina Houses of Representatives, things are soon likely to get even better for the Big 10, as well as for the thousands of other millionaires and billionaires who make up America’s top 1%.

The action in Washington, of course, centered around Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” – an 1,116-page monstrosity that seeks to make much of the Heritage Foundation’s infamous Project 2025 a reality.

Topping the list of billionaire-boosting provisions: a package of tax changes that will further enrich the Big 10 and their ilk and further enfeeble core federal government structures and services.

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reported, “Under the bill, the top 1 percent of people would receive tax cuts three times the size of those for people with incomes in the bottom 60 percent, measured as a share of after-tax income. The top 0.6 percent of people — the 1.2 million people with annual incomes above $1 million — would receive more total tax cuts than the 127 million people with incomes below $100,000.”

The bill would also slash core social safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP food assistance. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reports that the bill will lead to 3.2 million people losing food assistance benefits, while saddling states with around $14 billion a year in new costs — if, that is, they decide to take them on.

Meanwhile, on the same day the U.S. House approved its bill on a 215-214 vote – a vote made possible in large part by the gerrymandering that gave Republicans three extra seats in the North Carolina congressional delegation – Republicans in the North Carolina House approved their version of a new, omnibus state budget bill.

And while Gov. Josh Stein and several Democratic lawmakers have adopted the pragmatic strategy of praising parts of the bill for not veering as far off the rails as the Senate version that was approved earlier this spring, average North Carolinians should harbor no illusions about the direction the bill takes the state.

As the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center observed, the bill “continues to prioritize tax cuts for corporations and the rich — as well as building up reserve funds for corporate giveaways — above raising employee pay, making child care more affordable, keeping college tuition low, and the numerous other issues impacting quality of life for the average North Carolinian.”

Indeed, in a move that the Big 10 and their minions have undoubtedly already happily noted, the bill will continue to advance the GOP’s destructive and regressive scheme to repeal the state corporate income tax. As the BTC notes, that part of the House’s plan “will cost the state about $235 million over the biennium, and 94 percent of that tax giveaway will flow to out-of-state residents.”

What’s next for these two bills is somewhat unclear. While there remains some faint hope that the U.S. Senate could temper some of the worst program cuts, the expectation in Raleigh is that the state Senate will move aggressively to push things further to the right – a push that Stein and House Democrats (who theoretically possess the ability to sustain a gubernatorial veto) will be hard-pressed to resist.

And sadly, the chance that either package will be amended to include anything akin to the modest billionaire tax proposal suggested by Oxfam (or any other change that might alter the destructive, rich-getting-richer trend that dominates America’s trickle-up economy) remains less than zero.