FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: May 15, 2025

CONTACT: Carter Dougherty, carter@ourfinancialsecurity.org

Congress Must Reject Big, Brutal Bill Full of Corporate Giveaways
Reconciliation bill slashes safety nets for tax cuts skewed to the rich

Statement from Lisa Donner, Co-Executive Director of Americans for Financial Reform on the reconciliation legislation:

This week brought the big, brutal budget reconciliation bill into sharper focus as the Congressional Majority advanced tax cuts for the super-rich paid for by and severe cuts to healthcare and nutrition assistance through key committees. The combination of tax giveaways to those who need it least and benefit cuts slashing support for basic human needs t are a recipe for catastrophe for most of the country.

The reconciliation package already included steep cuts to oversight and enforcement at critical agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, effectively declaring open season for Wall Street, big banks, and abusive financial companies to take advantage of people, and leaving families across the country with less in their pockets at the end of the month and more vulnerable to financial predation.

The bill reserves a special vitriol for non-citizens – even in the tax provisions – who would pay more to transmit money to relatives overseas, and who could lose healthcare access and child tax credits for their citizen children. This legislation is a prescription for really rich people getting even richer by fleecing the rest of us – citizens and non-citizens alike.

Giveaways to the financial sector:

• The basis of the legislation is an extension of the Trump tax cuts passed in 2017, which worked overwhelmingly to the benefit of very high earners.
• Continuation of Wall street tax benefits, like the carried interest loophole, which benefits private equity barons.
• A five percent tax on remittances for non-citizens, making it harder for families to make ends meet.
• Pre-emption of state laws on artificial intelligence for a decade, a measure that could, among many other harms boost rental price fixing software, like Real Page that increases the cost of housing, and prevent checks on AI fueled harms including discrimination..
• The deduction for income from ‘pass-through’ businesses—which currently lets some individuals exclude up to 20 percent of their pass-through business income from federal tax—would be made permanent and increased to 22 percent. This change would overwhelmingly benefit wealthy individuals and private equity firms.
• Extension and expansion of the Opportunity Zones tax giveaway for wealthy developers, including a new round of designations.

Congress should instead be closing loopholes and making other changes that would both increase revenue and end incentives that reward Wall Street wealth extraction and the expense of workers and communities. We outlined such measures in a recent blog.

We also oppose provisions in the bill that would allow the Secretary of the Treasury to designate any nonprofit with whose political stance the administration disagrees as a “terrorist supporting organization.”

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