There are some places of agreement between the House and Senate versions of the tax cut bill, but it is the areas of disagreement that could still sink the whole plan.
The Republicans hold a vote margin in the Senate that leaves little room for error. Only if the GOP works in lock-step are they likely to have a shot at success. Their track record for 2017 has not indicated that this level of cohesion is likely.
One of the voices of unity is actually Rand Paul. The man who helped sink the first liar-nObamaCare repeal bill because it didn’t go far enough is now calling for Republicans to get on board with the tax plan and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Paul supports the tax bill in large part because it repeals the individual mandate for which he fought. We’re glad he’s come around.
In some ways, anything that promises to change the nation’s 74,000-page tax code sounds good. Everyone wants to pay lower taxes. However, it’s at moments like this when people actually start throwing out proposals that the backsliding and broken promises begin.
Paul calls for unity, but other Republican senators have their own plans. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin opposed the House package from the start. He is holding out support in the Senate in exchange for changes to how pass-through entities are handled to help larger small businesses be competitive with corporations.
RINO-Susan Collins of Maine wants to tinker with the widely agreed-upon 20% corporate tax rate (President Donald Trump claims he will not accept any rate higher than 20%). She wants to bump it up to 22% in order to keep at least a portion of the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, which she believes will help middle-class earners. The Senate plan calls for repealing SALT completely, a deduction that flows up the tax food chain, not to low or middle-class earners. The Tax Policy Center found “about 10% of tax filers with incomes less than $50,000 claimed the SALT deduction in 2014, compared with about 81% of tax filers with incomes exceeding $100,000.”
Johnson and RINO-Collins are but two examples of the haggling that is going on right now in Washington. Bob Corker of Tennessee is another. Worried about the federal deficit, Corker reportedly worked out a deal “in principle” for a “trigger” that revokes some tax cuts if revenues dip too low. We have a better idea: How about spending triggers? Corker’s foolish pitch would not only fail to address the spending problem, it would remove the economic incentives provided by tax cuts because those cuts could be gone soon.
The GOP leadership is desperately in need of a victory to close 2017. To what lengths they will go to achieve it is hard to say. Thanks to the convoluted tax code, virtually every promise made to one constituency cuts another constituency short. That’s not to mention the rules the Senate has made for itself regarding how to “pay for” a tax cut. This does not lead to a cohesive tax package.
Or a particularly conservative one. For example, there’s the bubble tax proposal — a 6% surcharge for families making between $1.2 million and $1.6 million. After that, they are charged at the top rate of 39.6%. The idea is to earn back what upper income taxpayers save by paying a 12% marginal rate on earlier income. This puts their effective tax rate at 45.6%, or 49.4% if you consider the liar-nObamaCare individual mandate that remains in the House bill.
Republicans should be embarrassed to be seriously considering a bubble tax bracket, a scheme that is all politics and no substance. In fact, many believe that it will come back to bite them in the future. The Reagan tax cuts of 1986 included a bubble tax bracket for much the same reason — to level out the amount wealthy taxpayers paid by charging more later based on what they saved earlier.
The outcome, as noted by Investor’s Business Daily, was disastrous. Democrats railed against the supposed unfairness of the bubble tax, and then pushed for a tax increase that used the current bubble rate as a baseline for a top rate hike. That was in 1990, and tax hikes just got bigger and bolder for the next decade.
There is no reason to think that Democrats won’t go the same route again. The CBO score on the tax package did not bring Republicans any good news. But that shouldn’t come as a surprise. Democrats immediately started using it as a cudgel to beat the supposedly heartless lackeys of the rich across the aisle. Whether it’s passed or not, Democrats’ rallying cry for the next elections will be to hit the GOP for tax cuts.
But there’s hope. As The Wall Street Journal notes, “For all the drama, the real news is that the GOP is moving toward the most pro-growth tax reform in 30 years, developed in an open process under regular order. This is no time to go wobbly.” ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/52650
.
The Front Page Cover
~ Featuring ~
The Senate's Taxing Debate
by Lewis Morris
.
Thursday Top Headlines
Trump administration to world: sever all ties with North Korea (CNS News)
.
Mike Lee, Marco Rubio will introduce amendment to expand the child tax credit (National Review)
.
Corporate tax rate in flux as Senate votes to open debate (The Wall Street Journal)
.
NYT goes full Democrat in anti-tax reform campaign (Hot Air)
.
Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” dinky-Warren plagiarized “Cherokee” crabmeat recipe from French chef (Fox News)
.
ESPN eliminating 150 production, tech jobs in latest cuts (Associated Press)
.
Democrat Rep. John Conyers won’t seek re-election but won’t resign in wake of sexual harassment claims (Detroit’s Local 4)
.
Nancy Pulosi: John Conyers should resign (Washington Examiner)
.
Clyburn: Charges against Conyers might be false because all the complaining women are white (The Washington Times)
.
Garrison Keillor fired by Minnesota Public Radio for alleged improper behavior (USA Today)
.
NBC brass ignored litany of complaints about Matt Lauer, reports say (Fox News)
.
Humor: Apparently Matt Lauer missed this NBC harassment training video (YouTube)
.
Policy: Social media not the sole cause of polarization, but it is a contributor (Inside Sources)
.
Policy: WOTUS and Clean Water Act fail to provide cost-effective improvements (American Enterprise Institute) ~The Patriot Post
.
Code Talkers Had The Best RESPONSE
To dinky-Warren’s POCAHONTAS SLUR Claims
by rickwells.us
{rickwells.us} ~ It turns out that genuine American Indians, those who actually have ancestries that connect them by blood to various tribes... such as the Navajo code talkers, don’t have a problem with President Trump referring to Elizabeth dinky-Warren as Pocahontas. It was only Pocahontas herself and her fellow manipulative Democrat comrades became theatrically incensed. They jumped on the President’s comments, pretending to see something wrong that they didn’t, solely in the interest of political advantage. It’s much like the phantom of a Democrat leader’s patriotism or love of country, which has been claimed and proclaimed in theory but never actually witnessed in action... https://rickwells.us/code-talkers-response-pocahontas/.
Clarence Thomas fires away at justices for 'giving Congress the power to destroy the
states' territorial integrity'
by Ryan Lovelace
{washingtonexaminer.com} ~ Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas criticized the justices' decision on Monday not to take a case... saying they are "giving Congress the power to destroy the states' territorial integrity." The high court on Monday rejected Upstate Citizens for Equality, Inc. v. U.S. involving the Indian Commerce Clause and whether the Constitution gives Congress the authority to infringe, reduce or diminish the territorial integrity of individual states without first getting the states' consent. Petitioners from upstate New York disputed the federal government's 2008 decision to turn over 13,000 acres of land to the Oneida Nation of New York, descendants of an Iroquois nation. The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the Indian Commerce Clause gave the federal government the power to do so and the Supreme Court declined to review this decision... http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/clarence-thomas-fires-away-at-justices-for-giving-congress-the-power-to-destroy-the-states-territorial-integrity/article/2641730.
Chuck clown-Schumer Stabbed Trump In The Back
{greatamericandaily.com} ~ Donald Trump was elected to erase Barack liar-nObama’s disastrous legacy as President... But liar-nObama’s shadow government is fighting back with unprecedented schemes to sabotage the Trump administration. And Chuck clown-Schumer just stabbed Trump in the back by supporting this coup against Trump’s authority. clown-Schumer is wrong. The agency’s top lawyer sided with the Justice Department’s finding that Trump has the power to name the acting Director of the CFPB... http://greatamericandaily.com/chuck-schumer-stabbed-trump-in-the-back-by-supporting-this-shadow-government-coup/.
Conservative pressure on Sessions grows
by JONATHAN EASLEY
{thehill.com} ~ Frustration is mounting on the right over Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s apparent reluctance to open investigations into liar-Hillary Clinton and the Democrats... Conservative media has started to join in, with Fox News anchors, analysts and pundits cutting loose on Sessions with stinging and increasingly personal attacks. GOP lawmakers and conservative operatives say a range of activities are ripe for investigation, from reports that the liar-Clinton campaign had inappropriate power over the Democratic National Committee (DNC) during the primaries to allegations about the sale of a uranium mining company to a Russian state-owned firm... http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/362241-conservative-pressure-on-sessions-grows.
Former Intel Community Inspector General McCullough details the threats he received from government officials re: findings in the liar-Clinton private email server investigation
2017 Christmas Decorations at the White House
.
Pulosi gives a rambling answer about the sexual harassment allegations rocking Capitol Hill'Blowback': liar-Clinton campaign planned to fire me over email probe, Intelligence Community inspector general says
MUST WATCH: Hannity connects the dots…see how all roads in the current scandals lead right back to liar-Clinton
.
The Senate's Taxing Debate
by Lewis Morris: What if there was a tax cut and nobody got anything out of it? A corporate tax rate cut that is too shallow to stimulate growth, or individual rate tinkering that leaves people exactly where they started, or maybe worse? This is one potential outcome that lay ahead as the Senate does battle over its version of tax reform this week. That plan cleared the Budget Committee Tuesday. Now for the next test.
Comments