COLUMBIA, Md. — The word “equality” carries special meaning in this planned community, nestled in the corridor between Baltimore and Washington.
Subsidized apartment complexes and tidy townhouses coexist with single-family colonials and split- levels, and racial, socio-economic and religious diversity is embedded in the fabric. Columbia’s founding father created the town in 1967 with hopes that all types of workers could afford to live there, “from the company janitor to the company president.”
It is through this lens that residents here are viewing the tax plan that Congress finalized this week. Even as people here try to assess how the new code will affect them individually, many are expressing greater concerns about the “knock-on” or secondary effects of the plan, which down the line could reduce or eliminate spending in some areas to pay for tax breaks for businesses and the wealthiest Americans.
In Columbia, that could mean cuts to the well-regarded public schools and aid programs for the most vulnerable residents, changes that would further chip away at the egalitarian pillars on which the town was built.
“It is definitely going to have some implications for us as a family, and yet we are solidly middle class,” said Maureen Harris as she sat with her husband, Bill, in the dining room of the house they share with their two teenage daughters.
“I am not worried that we won’t be able to pay our mortgage or anything like that,” said Ms. Harris, who serves as the executive director of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Columbia. “But to me, it’s just immoral. We are on this trajectory of every person for themselves. And the bill leaves a whole heck of a lot of people behind.”
