The new Congress faces a major decision on whether to extend Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts. We have already heard from Republicans about how those tax cuts benefit the middle class and need to be extended.

Yes, the middle class did get some benefit, and that benefit should be extended, but Republicans are trying to hide something: Pay no attention to the (very wealthy) man behind the curtain, they insist.

More than 80% of the cuts went to the wealthy and corporations. In 2025, the impact of the cuts will be an average of roughly $60,000 in savings for the top 1% and only $500 for families in the bottom 60%. The Treasury Department estimates that the top 0.1% would average $314,000 in savings. (Trump’s proposals for additional changes are even worse, increasing taxes on the lowest 95% while giving another windfall to the wealthy, by one analysis.)

This tax charity for the rich is not merely a matter of increasing the national debt — although the supposedly fiscally responsible Republicans ballooned the deficit in Trump’s first term and it is estimated that extending the cuts would increase the debt by $4.6 trillion over 10 years. Nor is it simply sour grapes to complain that others are getting more of a benefit.

These tax cuts for the wealthy are propelling the exploding wealth gap, the difference between the share of America’s wealth held by the rich and that left for the rest of us.

A soaring wealth gap is dangerous for our democracy. America’s founders understood this.

Thomas Jefferson, while serving as minister to France, was appalled at the gap he saw in Europe, wondering how things had gotten so bad since “the earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on.”

In his first inaugural address, Jefferson explained that what made America strong was citizens understanding that they shared in its opportunities and had a voice in its governance. A U.S. citizen, Jefferson said, “at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own personal concern.”

The same was true of economic opportunities: What made America great was the ability of all to benefit from the nation’s economic success. Having seen terrible poverty and obscene wealth in France, Jefferson was adamant that America avoid that disaster. He advised that if wealth inequality grew too large, a nation should “exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and … tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.”

Jefferson was no communist. In fact, he stressed that he was “conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable.” But he saw ruin for the nation if the wealth gap grew too large. “The consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind” was ruinous, he said; legislators “cannot invent too many devices” to address it.

Today, in part because of the Trump tax cuts, wealth inequality in America is reaching dangerous proportions. By the end of 2024, the top 0.1% (320,000 people) had six times the wealth of the entire bottom 50% (160,000,000). The top 1% had essentially the same wealth as the bottom 90%.

In individual terms, the top 10% of households each had an average of $6,900,000 in assets. The bottom 50% had an average of only $51,000 in wealth.

Americans tend to grossly underestimate the wealth gap, but they feel its effects. In 2024, the economy — overall — was doing great, but millions voted for Trump (anyone other than the incumbent party) because they don’t share in the nation’s great success.

If the government does not address this issue soon, people will demand action.

There is no doubt that many of the wealthy worked hard, were smart and made good decisions. Some undoubtedly would use the even greater wealth that extending the 2017 tax cuts would hand them to make jobs for others — although the myth of “trickle down” needs to be forever set aside.

But the rich became rich because of the opportunities our nation provides, from infrastructure, to first responders that keep their businesses safe, to our educational system that educates workers, to our social safety net (that allows them to avoid paying pensions). They owe their wealth, in part, to the nation and can afford to pay more for the blessings that they have received.

Tax benefits for the middle class? Keep them. But the tax giveaway for the billionaires should end.

John A. Ragosta is the former acting director of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello. He is the author of three books and has taught history at the University of Virginia and other institutions.