Capital & Main: Republican Tax Plan Targets California’s Elderly (12/14/17). The Senate tax bill reform will negatively impact the elderly population significantly. The bill, passed on December 2, 2017, is a two step process that will cut taxes first, then cut social safety programs dedicated to serving the elderly poor to make up for the massive deficit the bill generates. “Cutting eligibility, cutting benefits — that will lead to more seniors not being able to age at home, but being forced into nursing facilities,” said Amber Christ, a Los Angeles-based staff attorney for Justice in Aging. “It will be a catastrophic scaling back of those programs that will impact generations and generations moving forward,” Christ added, calling the looming cuts “a reversal of all the gains from the War on Poverty.”