Sen, GOP “Leader” Mitch McConnell and Stefanie Muchow
(His
director of operations)
We did it - we screwed the DEM base
and most of America
(Yea
Go GOP)
Senate in
the middle of the night passes their version of the tax “reform” bill 51-49.
One of many major
headlines — this one from
Common Dreams:
“51 GOP
Senators Just Voted to Cut $1.5 Trillion from Medicare and Medicaid to Give the
Super-Rich and Corporations a Tax Cut”
Noteworthy: Sen. Bernie Sanders
(I-VT) after passage said in part: “This is not a bad bill. It's a horrific
bill.”
This
coverage from Rolling Stone caught my eye and boy does writer Tim
Dickinson nail it – following here in part (my emphasis highlighted):
Run up to
the vote that followed a day of wheeling and dealing, was set in motion after
an estimate released by the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) gave lie to the
GOP's claim that the tax plan would pay for itself by boosting America's GDP.
But even JCT's “dynamic
scoring” of the bill, which attempts to account for economic activity spurred
by tax cuts, found it would cost $1 trillion over ten years.
Instead Republicans
first focused on trying to appease the deficit hawk, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) and
considered reducing the corporate tax cut or adding a “trigger that would reverse
cuts if deficits swelled,” but those talks foundered.
McConnell instead decided to buy off holdouts
like Collins from ME and Murkowski from AK and Johnson from WI who could have
doomed the bill – but I guess they folded like the proverbial $3 suitcase?
Shame on them.
Long after midnight,
following a chaotic scramble that saw:
1. Tax
legislation being re-written on the fly,
2 Handwritten
edits in the margins,
3. And, full
pages crossed out,
Then Senate Republicans
passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) – a bill that would ultimately:
1. Hike taxes
on millions of middle-class Americans,
2. Swell the
ranks of the uninsured by 13 million,
3. Explode
deficits by $1.4 trillion in the first decade alone.
The winners in
this bill are the Republican donor class:
1. Corporations that would see their tax bills
slashed by more than 40 percent – and get to bring home trillions in off-shore profits at shamefully discounted tax rates as low as 7.5 percent,
2. Executives at companies with “pass through
earnings, who would get to deduct nearly a quarter of that income,”
3. Heirs (like the Trump kids) would get richer
from a doubling of the estate tax exemption to $22 million for couples,
4. Even private jet owners would get to deduct
aircraft maintenance from their taxes (just like Trump himself).
(I note: When can private citizens deduct car or truck maintenance?).
Then this sick amendment
– call it “the Betsy DeVos education pay-back or public education take-away to
religious schools.”
(Note: I
add this related to that).
VP Pence wasn't needed for final passage – but he did
show up to break a tie vote for the DeVos-favored amendment allowing tax
deductible savings to be spent on private and religious K-12 schools.
The only GOP
“No” vote on the bill was from Tennessee's retiring Senator Bob Corker, who
gets little credit for his resistance – days earlier, Corker had provided the
pivotal committee vote allowing the bill to reach the floor, saying: “I wanted
to get to yes, Corker wrote in a statement. But at the end of the day, I am not
able to cast aside my fiscal concerns and vote for legislation that deepens the
debt burden on future generations.”
Now to the House to reconcile the differences and boy
are there plenty …
This bill should never see the light of day, but wait and
watch the deal making …
Thanks for stopping by.
No comments:
Post a Comment