A guest on MSNBC's "AM Joy" argued Sunday that the Republican tax reform bill is akin to raping poor people.
Host Joy Reid had on former Republican policy adviser Bruce Bartlett to give his take on the GOP tax bill, which passed the Senate late Friday. Bartlett once worked as an adviser to Ronald Reagan and as a Treasury Department official in the George H. W. Bush administration, before he became an outspoken critic of the GOP and embraced Keynesian economics in the late 2000s.
"What would be the justification in your mind that Republicans would have for raising taxes on lower income people?" Reid asked. "Because they spend all of their income, so why raise taxes on them?"
"It really defies comprehension," Bartlett said. "Maybe they think that the poor have it so easy that they need to have to pay more taxes to force them to go out and work more."
"The amazing thing is that people seem to be accepting this so meekly and mildly," he continued. "It's really akin to rape. It really is."