WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today, Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) named Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) its October 2017 Porker of the Month for spreading falsehoods about commonsense tax reform.
Every American who pays taxes is subjected to an onerous and stressful ordeal. Each year, it takes 8.9 billion hours to comply with the tax code, at a cost to the economy of $234.4 billion. The instructions alone for a typical 1040 tax form used by most Americans has grown from just two pages in 1935, to 241 pages today. For 94 percent of taxpayers, the process is so complicated that they pay someone else or use software to fill out their tax forms.
This daunting reality stands in stark contrast to the improvements that will be accomplished through tax reform. The Unified Framework released on September 27, 2017, proposes lowering taxes for every American, doubling the standard deduction, and reducing the number of tax brackets from eight to four. In fact, the vast majority of Americans will be able to fill out their taxes on a postcard. It also lowers the nation’s business tax rates, which are the highest in the industrialized world, so the United States can compete for more jobs and higher wages on the global stage.
Yet, in a lengthy series of tweets on September 27, 2017, Sen. Wyden repeatedly called the proposal a “scam,” incorrectly claimed that the proposal, “rewards companies that sends red, white, and blue jobs overseas,” and falsely asserted that the plan, “raises taxes on many middle-class families.”
CAGW President Tom Schatz said in a statement: “April 15 strikes fear into the hearts of more than one hundred million Americans. That anxiety is borne out of a complex, outdated, and harmful tax system. Sen. Wyden sounds all too comfortable defending the status quo. He thinks it’s a ‘scam’ to allow more Americans to keep their own money. That flippant remark clearly shows that Sen. Wyden is wildly out of touch with the everyday struggles of hard-working taxpayers.”
For smearing the effort to lower taxes for hard-working Americans, CAGW names Sen. Ron Wyden its October 2017 Porker of the Month.
Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government. Porker of the Month is a dubious honor given to lawmakers, government officials, and political candidates who have shown a blatant disregard for the interests of taxpayers.
