PRESIDENT & GOP ARE LYING ABOUT TAX CUT BILL

…This is a caricature of the  Florida Senator that has upset his party

 

GOP is upset that Sen. Rubio, let the tax-cut “cat-out-of-the-bag” on a national TV

 

Do you ever wonder why the Republicans are rushing to get the tax legislation through the approval process?

 

Just look at the time it took to get other, former major tax bills through this process and to make them into a law of the land.

 

For Ronald Reagan’s complicated 1986 tax cut and reform plan, that program took 18 months before it became law. 

 

Even after the release of George W. Bush’s minor bill still took almost 6 months to become US law. 

 

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) took nearly a year to become law and it included a congressional recess with angry town hall meetings that had turned the public’s attitude against the bill.  But once it became law, the ACA [Obamacare] achieved mostly large approval throughout many of the states.

 

The accelerated pace of this latest tax plan is a classic attempt to keep the American public from figuring out why they needed to “Fast-Track” this bogus tax bill.  (I’ll get into that later.)

 

It’s now all at a breakneck pace for passing a tax plan bill that seriously contrasts with all these previous tax cut bills.  And this one does not do the middle-class or the poor, any favors.  Many individuals in these categories will end up having increased taxes.  After a short period, virtually everyone in these two categories will end up paying more, while the wealthy’s tax cuts will remain permanent.  It’s a terrible bill and it doesn’t do what the president promised.

 

In fact if it’s the “Christmas Present” that the president promised, it’s a present form the Christmas Grinch, not from Santa.

 

There are some real screwy issues inside this tax plan.

 

As an example, under the new tax code, the GOP bill would create the unintended consequence of preventing US companies from using key deductions, including the popular research and development tax credit.

 

The apparently “not-so-bright” Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), who is one of the conferees charged with blending the two bills together has actually said: “I’m guessing they just needed something quick to make the bill work.”   Yeah, right!

 

There has now been discussion of moving the corporate tax rate that the bill slashed from 35% to 20% by the House and Senate, back up to 22%, but the backlash against that proposal has been extremely intense, and that idea will probably will be dropped.

 

But more revenue must be found in order to get the bill passed with only 50 Senate votes.  So now they have decided to limit all Americans from deducting state and local taxes. Some of Trump’s New York friends, and many from California, have taken exception to that provision and have lobbied the president personally against it.  Of course, the president is ignoring many of those friends from the West Coast.

 

Democrats have properly accused Republicans of whisking the legislation through to avoid any public scrutiny for offering an offensive at public hearings. The GOP has not allowed either of these opportunities for the public to dive into the bills.

 

“It’s clear that we could have defeated this bill had we gone through regular order and had any expert witness from any blue state or high-tax state come in,” said Rep. John B. Larson (D-CONN), who was a member of Democratic leadership during the open process of passing the ACA. The provision limiting taxpayers’ ability to deduct state and local taxes hits high-tax areas such as California, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut is particularly hard.  “People would obviously have said, ‘Well, hey wait a minute,’ ” Larson said.

 

Of course, the Republican congressional leaders dispute such comparisons, saying that the process on dealing with taxes has been going on for years, given that the party has long been debating this idea.

 

But debating the subject and offering bills that make no sense to the middle-class and the poor, and that give away the store to the top 1%, that just ain’t right.

 

However, the Republicans keep trying to sell the idea that this is “no big deal”.

 

“These are relatively small bills, 400 pages or so; they’re not hard to digest. The policy decisions, the thoughtfulness, a lot of these issues we’ve been debating together and apart for years,” said House Ways and Means Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX). “Bottom line is the American people have been waiting 30 years. So to paraphrase a hardware store: less talking, more doing.”

 

But a number of Republican lawmakers do agree that the bill doesn’t really work as it was promised.  However, now it’s no longer a mystery as to why they can’t seem to find the revenue to offset the deficit costs.

 

This bill doesn’t “do” anything that the majority of the American people want, and it is just Part I for their drive to go after cutting our nation’s entitlements.

 

Many Republican politicians are currently very up-set with their Senator from Florida, Marco Rubio, when he let the “cat-out-of-the-bag” on a national TV Sunday political show.  It was Senator Rubio that was very up front stating that this tax plan was only Part I of their plan.  Rubio said that once the plan started making the national deficit grow beyond what was acceptable, Part II would be to go after cutting expenses by going after entitlements like Social Security and Medicare.

 

Many lobbyists, and Democrats and other observers expect to find the final version of the plan to be filed this week.  It is expected to be just as full of surprises as the various versions that have already appeared. But they are going for a big legislative win that has eluded them all this year.  The Republicans are showing little interest in slowing down to take a closer look at their bogus plan.

 

“The frenzy, and I would call it a frenzy, to get it done and have a Christmas present for America, number one, I think it’s unnecessary; it’s a self-imposed deadline, and number two, it makes the possibility for error much greater,” said Steve Bell, a senior adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center who was staff director during the 1986 Reagan tax cut effort. “This is a rush without a reason other than the political desire for a Rose Garden signing ceremony.”

 

Senator Rubio made it very clear that this is a plan that the Republicans have had for over 40 years and this is the first time that they control enough of the government to possibly get it passed.

 

God help us all if they succeed

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017