Pelosi calls GOP tax plan ‘a moment of truth for America’

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Sunday called the upcoming vote on Republicans’ proposed tax overhaul bill “a moment of truth for America,” saying the plan could explode the national debt while hurting the middle class.

“What they do is it’s a sleight of hand, it’s a shell game, it’s a Ponzi scheme,” the California Democrat told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

“They spread out this banquet for the wealthiest Americans, for corporate America, and they throw a few crumbs to the middle class and then they take them away.”

{mosads}House Republicans last Thursday unveiled their tax code rewrite bill to much fanfare. The bill, which includes more than 400 pages, cuts rates and eliminates tax breaks on both the individual and corporate sides of the code.

It has faced initial criticism for repealing the state and local tax deduction and eliminating a tax credit for adoptive parents.

Pelosi on Sunday was critical of eliminating benefits for teachers buying supplies for schools, of medical deductions and more.

“The list is a long one of all the things they pull away from the middle class, so really the net gain is not there, but the huge gain is there for the super rich and corporate America,” Pelosi said.

“This is a moment of truth for America,” she continued.

“Are we going to go deeply into debt to give tax cuts to the high end, at the expense of working families in America? As we give advantages to corporations to send jobs overseas, while pulling away school supplies from children?”