Looks like they pulled it off. Congratulations, Republicans, you got a significant piece of legislation passed! It only took a little over a year and it is wildly unpopular, but good for you, you fuckers. And now Trumpty Dumpty can crow over how great he is and how much he is accomplishing. Oh, wait, he was doing that already. Let's celebrate with the greatest hits of the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017".
- I already mentioned the wildly unpopular part, but it actually set a record of sorts - the least popular bill of the last 30 years, with only 26% of Americans supported - so more kudos to you GOP. It has been unpopular for months, but get this: they actually made it worse in response to polling. The version that gave only 65% of the breaks to the richest .1 percent had 39% support. That wasn't bad enough so they managed to get that 65% up to 83% so even more people could be unhappy. Impressive.
- they are passing it in the face of public dissent because . . . well, we don't really know why. Don't care? Are actively trying to hurt the working class? They're mean? They're greedy? Probably all of the above and more, but it is impressive that they are not only flying in the face of public opinion but quickly and recklessly before they can be stopped. They know it is awful, they know people hate it, so better hurry! No one knows what is in it or just how bad it is, but that is for certain is that the people who will benefit from poorly constructed and confusing are those who can pay people to find the loopholes.
- one reason they are passing it, and quickly, is as a ransom payment to their donors. Most Republicans get the bulk of their funding from big ticket donors and those donors made it clear that if they didn't get the tax breaks they were promised those donations would dry up. So stop to consider this little loop: you make sure we make more money or we won't give you more of the money you made sure we got to make more of . . . my head hurts. They need that money coming in for the midterms.
- despite their claims that this horror show of a bill is intended to benefit the middle class - an out and out lie, remember the 85% - it isn't about the middle class at all, or the lower class or upper class for that matter, but the donor class. You know the donor class, the richest of the very rich (even among the super wealthy there is class distinction with the top three families being worth more than the next 20 combined) who are the biggest donors. They are the ones who benefit the most, which means, follow the breadcrumbs here, that this tax plan is being stuffed down our throats for literally seven or eight families. They're the families you love to hate like the Kochs and Waltons.
- the so-called deficit hawks, some of whom literally vowed they would "never support a bill that added even a penny" to the deficit - I'm looking at you Bob Corker - are now perfectly okay with the projections of adding at least 1.5 trillion dollars (some are over 2 trillion) to very same deficit. That's a looooooot of pennies, Bob.
- much of this deficit will come from having lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 to 24 per cent, the largest cut ever (another record!), but there are some nice specific tidbits that serve specific people with lots of money. The real estate provision that lets rich property owners (like Prima Donald) pay less tax is a pretty small piece by some standards, but is responsible for $450 million of that $1.5T. How do they justify this? By claiming that those corporations and "job creators" will pass those benefits on to their workers - good ol' trickle down economics - even as said corporations publicly state they they aren't gonna do that. Oh, and unlike the things that do actually benefit the middle class that expire in five or ten years, those cuts are permanent.
- which reminds me, the projections say that after all the piddly shit like the child credit and SALT revisions go away (sorry, those pieces are significant for many and I shouldn't dismiss them, but when you compare them to the six-figure breaks it means for the wealthy piddly shit is about right) a whopping 62% of American will experience an overall tax increase. And guess which 62? The evil genius of this is that since a bunch of folks who need it really badly will see a little bit of money (or a least a smaller bite of the paycheck) in the next couple of years they will think it is great. But only because we are poorly informed and have short attention spans.
- and for the list within a list, how about the heinous shit that is also in the bill that has fuck all to do with taxes: the removal of the ACA's individual mandate, which will in fact help pay for the tax breaks (the rich literally benefiting from the suffering of the poor) but end with 13 million people losing their health insurance; opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration, this one helping pay for tax breaks by sacrificing natural resources; changing language that describes the uses of tax-free college savings accounts, going for "child in utero" to "unborn child", so while you save money for your future children - you always could - you can support the anti-abortion crowd as well; and just so the religious right doesn't feel left out, a repeal of the Johnson amendment, prohibiting non-profit groups like churches from engaging in political activism. Now your megachurches - guess who they support? - can use their untaxed money to support candidates and preach for the party. Should these things have been examined and debated and voted on as stand-alone issues? Sure, but then people might object and we know how that works out. Or not, since they have displayed a staggering disregard for what we think.
- it is also worth stopping to consider that, despite our poor recent voting record indicating the opposite, conventional wisdom dictates that they are dooming themselves to massive backlash in coming elections by passing stuff people hate. So they're mean and stupid. But they're doing it!
And maybe that is the proverbial silver lining. They don't listen to our input, they act in direct opposition to our best interests and do it blatantly - you almost have to admire such shamelessness - and they pat each other on the back for screwing us. But they might just act reprehensibly enough that we will get off our asses to hand them theirs. Here's hoping. But they're still fuckers.
12/21 Update - I touched in but should have spent more time talking about the rush to pass this POS - only seven weeks and things literally being scribbled in the margins after it left committee - but as more and more comes out about just how bad it is I found a piece in the NYT today especially apropos. It is very dense and if you start clicking on links you might never come out, but I highly recommend reading it here. This is beyond any measure of irresponsible or reprehensible and should be labeled as a crime against the American people.
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