Rep. Rodney Davis knew that the GOP tax scam was going to hammer students in his district and increase the cost of college, but he voted for it anyway to deliver a tax break to millionaires and big corporations.
Here are just a few ways the GOP tax scam is going to hurt students, graduates, and their families:
- Eliminates the tax benefit that helps graduates and their families pay off student loan interest – a deduction used by nearly 28,000 of Davis’ constituents in 2014.
- Removes the waiver that prevents graduate students and university employees from being taxed on their tuition benefits, which would increase their taxes by as much as 400% and could harm the nearly 1,400 faculty and staff at the University of Illinois who receive tuition assistance.
- Abolishes a program that incentivizes employers to help graduates pursue higher education – the very program that Davis said he wanted to see expanded as part of the bill.
These cuts to education assistance will cost students and families more than $71 billion over the next decade according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
And it’s not like Davis didn’t know how harmful this bill was – students made their voices heard loud and clear, a local editorial spelled it out, and Davis himself wrote a last-minute letter acknowledging that eliminating tuition waivers would hurt grad students. Then when Washington Republicans ignored his letter, he voted for the GOP tax scam anyway.
“Rep. Rodney Davis’ many promises to help students ring hollow with his vote to raise their taxes and make it harder for them to pay off their loans,” said DCCC spokesperson Jacob Peters. “By voting for this GOP tax scam, Rodney Davis has made it clear he cares more about giving tax cuts to millionaires and big corporations than he does about reducing the cost of college and easing the burden of student loan debt on students and their families.”