Biggest Reform EVER passed thread

[Deacfreak07]

According to NYMag, in its rush to pass the bill without actually reading it the Senate GOP accidentally killed all corporate tax deductions.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...ally-killed-all-corporate-tax-deductions.html

"The GOP had originally intended to abolish the AMT. But on Friday, with the clock running out — and money running short — Senate Republicans put the AMT back into their bill. Unfortunately for McConnell, they forgot to lower the AMT after doing so.

This is a big problem. The Senate bill brings the normal corporate rate down to 20 percent — while leaving the alternative minimum rate at … 20 percent. The legislation would still allow corporations to claim a wide variety of tax credits and deductions — it just renders all them completely worthless. Companies can either take no deductions, and pay a 20 percent rate — or take lots of deductions … and pay a 20 percent rate.

With this blunder, Senate Republicans have achieved the unthinkable: They’ve written a giant corporate tax cut that many of their corporate donors do not like."


McConnell’s mistake has two big implications. First and foremost, it means the Senate will almost certainly have to vote on a tax bill again before one goes into law. Previously, it looked as though Paul Ryan had enough votes in the House to pass the Senate bill as is. This took pressure off the party’s conference committee (the House and Senate leaders tasked with reconciling each chamber’s bills). Worst-case scenario, the House could just rubber-stamp the Senate’s work. Now, that option is deeply undesirable. It remains overwhelmingly likely that Republicans will pass a giant tax cut. But their task is now a bit more difficult.

The second implication is that McConnell is going to need new revenue. In all probability, Republicans are going to drop the alternative-minimum tax rate well below 20 percent. That will put the bill’s price tag over $1.5 trillion. Right now, some of the House’s most heinous revenue raisers — including the infamous tax on graduate student tuition — are not in the Senate bill. Chances are now somewhat higher that these odious provisions will make it into the final legislation, as Republicans will once again be desperate for pay-fors. That said, it’s also possible that the GOP will simply revise their bill’s corporate rate up to 22 percent, now that President Trump has given the party permission to do so.

Regardless, the AMT fiasco is bound to be the tip of an iceberg of unintended consequences. Senate Republicans wanted to pass their (indefensible) tax bill before anyone had time to figure out what was in it. They succeeded a bit more literally than they’d planned."

#RushTheProcess

 

[JuiceCrewAllStar]

I'd like to see those numbers broken down by race. I think the GOP gains among HS and less are just white people.

 

[dartsndeacs]

that ends in 2016, something to note is that Trump's support amongst college educated whites was his best demographic mid-late 2017, from a percentage of change standpoint.

 

[JuiceCrewAllStar]

that ends in 2016, something to note is that Trump's support amongst college educated whites was his best demographic mid-late 2017, from a percentage of change standpoint.

Do they break that down by age? Source?

 

[PhDeac]

Next Up: Tax Reform

So you're arguing he's gotten more popular among college educated white people since he got elected?

 

[dartsndeacs]

So you're arguing he's gotten more popular among college educated white people since he got elected?

It was more something like he lost 20 percent from everywhere, 10 percent from non-college educated whites but only 4 percent from college educated whites

 

[Wakeforest22890]

White people.

 

[PhDeac]

It was more something like he lost 20 percent from everywhere, 10 percent from non-college educated whites but only 4 percent from college educated whites

Right. He had already lost college educated whites in 2016.

 

[WakeandBake]

So much winning

 

[ChrisL68]

Those morons passed the tax bill that kept the AMT rate at 20% which means that all of the corporate tax breaks that they pass would be offset by the AMT since it's now at the same rate as the regular tax. This is what happens when you really pass a bill before you have a chance to read it.

 

[ConnorEl]

Is This The Right Time For a Big Tax Cut?

You can read or listen.

Short answer is no.

[Unless you are a member of the modern Republican religion, in which case it’s always time for a tax cut. And less regulation. Because these are the answer to almost any problem at any time.]

 

[ConnorEl]

Republicans Are Coming for Your Benefits


Quote
—————
Republicans don’t care about budget deficits, and never did. They only pretend to care about deficits when one of two things is true: a Democrat is in the White House, and deficit rhetoric can be used to block his agenda, or they see an opportunity to slash social programs that help needy Americans, and can invoke deficits as an excuse. All of this has been obvious for years to anyone paying attention.

So it’s not at all surprising that they were willing to enact a huge tax cut for corporations and the wealthy even though all independent estimates said this would add more than $1 trillion to the national debt. And it was also predictable that they would return to deficit posturing as soon as the deed was done, citing the red ink they themselves produced as a reason to cut social spending.

Yet even the most cynical among us are startled both by how quickly the bait-and-switch is proceeding and by the contempt Republicans are showing for the public’s intelligence.

In fact, the switch began even before the marks swallowed the bait.

During the Senate debate over the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Senator Orrin Hatch was challenged over support for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers nine million U.S. children — but whose funding lapsed two months ago, and has not been renewed. Hatch declared his support for the program, but insisted that “the reason CHIP’s having trouble is because we don’t have money anymore” — just before voting for a trillion-and-a-half-dollar tax cut that will deliver the bulk of its benefits to the richest few percent of the population.

He then went on to say, “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything.”

So who, exactly, was he talking about, and which programs are consuming these billions and billions and trillions?

Was he talking about food stamps, most of whose beneficiaries are children, elderly or disabled? (And many of the rest are working hard, just not earning enough to get by.)

Was he talking about the earned-income tax credit, which rewards only those who work?

Was he talking about Medicaid, which again mainly benefits children, the elderly and the disabled, plus people who work hard but whose jobs don’t provide health benefits?

We can go on down the list. The simple fact is that big spending on people who “won’t lift a finger” doesn’t actually happen in America — only in Hatch’s meanspirited imagination.

Now, to be fair, there are some people in America who get lots of money they didn’t lift a finger to earn — namely, inheritors of large estates. Strange to say, however, Republican legislation would give these people much more — indeed, billions and billions of dollars — without requiring any additional effort on their part.

The House version of the big tax cut would eliminate the estate tax entirely; the Senate version would double the level of wealth exempted from the tax, to $22.4 million for a couple. How can this be justified if it’s supposedly hard to find money for children’s health care?

Well, Senator Chuck Grassley explained it all last week: “I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

Hmm. Somehow, I don’t think limiting spending on booze, women, and movies (movies?) is going to be sufficient for the median American household — which had an income of $59,000 last year — to end up with a $22 million estate. And if you think of people who really will benefit from eliminating taxes on inheritance — people like, say, Donald Trump Jr. — one is not immediately struck by the notion that this is a reward for their fathers’ abstemious lifestyles.

The important thing to realize, however, is that the hypocrisy and contempt for the public we’ve seen in the past few days is just the beginning.

It has been widely noted that the tax bills enacted by the House and Senate are remarkably unfriendly to the middle class — in fact, the Senate bill, once fully phased in, would actually raise taxes on a majority of middle-class families. But that observation captures only a small part of what is about to happen to ordinary, hard-working Americans.

For budget deficits are going to soar thanks to Republican legislation — probably by even more than the official scorekeepers say, because the legislation creates so many new loopholes. And offsetting those deficits will require going after the true big-ticket programs, namely Medicare and Social Security.

Oh, they’ll find euphemisms to describe what they’re doing, talking solemnly about the need for “entitlement reform” as an act of fiscal responsibility — while their huge budget-busting tax cut for the rich gets shoved down the memory hole. But whatever words they use to cloak the reality of the situation, Republicans have given their donors what they wanted — and now they’re coming for your benefits.
—————

 

[WakeandBake]

That post above is basically the distilled version of a jhmd vs ________ thread that occurs every few months

 

[PhDeac]

It's worth noting that conservative posters aren't defending this bill aside from palma's trolling.

 

[tiltdeac]

This tweet storm is pretty good. Essentially that this tax bill (and some prior GOP tax plans) is so cartoonishly awful that when you describe it accurately, people don't believe you. "When GOP economic policy is accurately explained to voters, they simply cannot believe it's true." Which, intentional or not, works in their favor, because people just assume the source is biased, and the truth must be somewhere in the middle.

 

[ImTheCaptain]

Meh. Think when most people say they're fiscally conservative this bill is exactly what they mean.

woof, comrade

 

[Deacfreak07]

What do you think they mean?

 

[ImTheCaptain]

Regressive tax structure + cutting social spending

Tentpoles of conservative economics

This bill sucks but it's not materially different from most conservative theory

one might consider the difference between Fiscally conservative and Fiscally Conservative

 

[Deacfreak07]

Next Up: Tax Reform

One might be that pedantic

One might also say that it's not really practical to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative because social welfare costs money, regardless of capital letters

Maybe “Efficiently Liberal” describes what ITC is talking about?

 

[PhDeac]

This tweet storm is pretty good. Essentially that this tax bill (and some prior GOP tax plans) is so cartoonishly awful that when you describe it accurately, people don't believe you. "When GOP economic policy is accurately explained to voters, they simply cannot believe it's true." Which, intentional or not, works in their favor, because people just assume the source is biased, and the truth must be somewhere in the middle.

That's a good read. I remember having an argument with DeacMan several years ago. He was contending that following the news is a responsibility. I said it was a privilege that relatively few people have. Most people are too busy to get into the weeds we get into on these boards. They don't have jobs that allow them to read and post about articles on computers and phones all day. So they get politics from what TV news they heard and maybe a local paper. And if they find a politician they trust, they will stick with him or her.

Class inequality and the grind makes it hard to keep our voters educated on the issues.