WASHINGTON, Jan. 2 (Xinhua) -- Jacob Lew, former U.S. Treasury Secretary under President Barack Obama, said on Tuesday the tax cut legislation passed last year has concentrated benefits for big corporations and rich people, and will leave the country broke.
"It's a ticking time bomb in terms of the debt," Lew told Bloomberg Radio Tuesday. "You cannot run a fiscal policy by spending trillions of dollars you don't have at a time that the economy is doing well."
President Donald Trump signed the tax cut bill into law before Christmas 2017. The biggest tax overhaul since 1986 would add about 1.5 trillion U.S. dollar to national debts over the next decade, according to Congressional Budget Office.
The tax cut legislation will lower the corporate tax from 35 percent to 21 percent and reduce taxes for most U.S. families.
However, the largest cuts, in dollars and as a percent of after-tax income, would accrue to higher-income households, according to Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington.
"What we've seen is a tax cut that spends money we don't have to have very concentrated benefits for global corporations and the top 1 percent, and it's leaving us broke," according to Lew.
"The next shoe to drop is going to be an attack on the most vulnerable in our society," Lew said.
"How are we going to pay for the deficit caused by the tax cut? We are going to see proposals to cut health insurance for poor people, to take basic food support away from poor people, to attack Medicare and Social Security. One could not have made up a more cynical strategy."
