RELIEF: Only if you're rich

GOP deficit hawks have become extinct.

While admittedly saddling the nation with trillions of new debt to give great tax relief to the already rich, the GOP is again trying to fool the middle and lower classes by handing them minuscule tax relief that won’t even cover the current low inflation.

Repealing the insurance mandate will cause 13 million more people to be uninsured. Nice going, GOP!

Completely unrelated is the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska to energy exploration. Dirty politics pure.

Everyone with common sense, a little understanding of current economic realities, knows that the main benefits of this tax bill will not trickle down. Corporations will not invest in new equipment unless there is increased demand for their product. If they invest, it will be in more productive equipment, which will minimize or even eliminate current jobs.

Trump and his GOP want us to believe that businesses will use their tax reductions to increase wages. Dream on.

Lowering the tax rate from 39.6 percent to 37 percent for incomes above $470,000 will hand someone making $1,470,000 an additional present of $26,000. Is this windfall necessary considering anticipated deficits in the trillions in a time when the economy is doing relatively well?

Unsolved health care problems, immigration and the Mexican wall, current tax reform for the rich, and the top predator in the WH, should cause a political climate change in the 2018 election. If Alabama can do it, so can Idaho and the nation.

JUERGEN NOLTHENIUS

Coeur d’Alene