Corporate tax breaks benefit everyone? Don’t count on it

How the rich will get richer as Republican Congress balloons federal deficit

- MICHAEL HILTZIK COLUMNIST

ANDREW HARNIK Getty Images REPUBLICANS have backed corporate tax cuts but not health subsidies. Above, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.).

The most famous quip ever uttered about the federal budget is the one attributed to Sen. Everett Dirksen (RIll.), who served 34 years in the House and Senate until his death in 1969: "A billion here, a billion there; pretty soon you're talking about real money."

Dirksen didn't actually say the second part of that quote, according to the keepers of the Dirksen archives. But as a description of the hand-wringing that commonly infects budget negotiations in Washington, it's well put.

At this moment, after all, the federal government is shut down in part because Republican majorities in both chambers are fretting about the cost of extending subsidies for Affordable Care Act health plan premiums, which the Congressional Budget Office places at $350 billion over 10 years. Leaving aside that the extension would also increase the number of Americans with health insurance by 3.8 million, the price is dwarfed by the cost of some other initiatives more cherished by the GOP.

One was pinpointed in an analysis the CBO issued on Oct. 8. It's the reduction in corporate taxes enacted by the Republican Congress in July. The corporate tax cut, the CBO calculates, will increase the federal deficit by $77 billion this year alone.

Under the circumstances, it's only fair to ask what the nation gains from giving corporations another big tax break, on top of the historically generous tax breaks granted corporations by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, also a Republican project. Thanks to business provisions in that measure, including a permanent cut in the corporate tax rate from a top marginal rate of 35% to a flat rate of 21%, the federal government forfeited about $188 billion in revenue last year, according to the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.