OP-ED: I Refuse to Support This Destructive and Irresponsible Senate Tax Bill Until It Is Presented to Me in MLA Format

In a shocking display of cynicism and disregard for 99% of the American population, the United States Senate passed a tax reform bill before sunrise on Saturday morning which bestows extensive tax cuts upon the rich and massive benefits to corporations, leaving the rest of America in the dust, without even bothering to properly format the document.

It is appalling to me how anyone could support the contents of this bill—rife with irresponsible policy changes and unrelated addenda—until it reads in 12 pt. Times New Roman font, double spaced, with 1’’ margins, per MLA formatting guidelines.

Included in the bill is an income tax reduction of 1.1% for the top bracket, predicted to cost $1.17 trillion over the next 10 years. Tax breaks for the middle and lower classes pale in comparison. The most heinous feature of this policy, however, is that it is written in Helvetica. Such an egregious effort to worsen the degree of income inequality will garner no support from me while it is written in an unprofessional sans-serif font.

Furthermore, Senate Democrats were given almost no time to read the 479-page document—which featured illegible policy changes scrawled in the margins—causing some to doubt the legitimacy of American democracy. These GOP lawmakers obviously failed high school English, as it is well known that all such additional assaults on the poor must assume the form of either footnotes or endnotes (preferably footnotes, for such a highly-subdivided document).

The bill is also predicted to increase the uninsured rate from 11 to 16 percent by 2027, leaving 13 million more Americans uninsured. And who decided it would be appropriate to draft this section in size 10 font? Are we expected to squint while reading policies that may lead to the deaths of thousands of Americans? I would hope not.

We as a people should not stand for this. When we attack the most vulnerable portions of our country, we better do so in a systematically-organized, easy-to-read document, just as the founding fathers intended.