WHITE HOUSE ADVISORS ADMIT THE TAX BILL IS A "GIMMICK"

…Mick Mulvaney on Meet the Press

 

“Reconciliation” requires the Senate to “shoehorn the tax bill into the rules of the Senate”. 

 

I wrote a recent article about how the president sent some “spinners and rationalizers” to the Sunday political shows to confuse the public about the administration’s support / non-support for Roy Moore in Alabama.

 

But what I didn’t report was that from those Sunday program interviewers, it also became obvious that the Trump administration was admitting that the GOP tax plan currently before the Senate is built on pure fiction.  And based on the nation’s economy today, Trump’s tax cuts deal with a problem that doesn’t even exist.  We are in the longest positive economy ever recorded, and the unemployment rate is at an all-time low.  Tax cuts are for times of recession, not for times when the Dow/Jones is going bananas, as it is today.

 

Mick Mulvaney, the deficit hawk President Trump assigned to oversee the nation’s budget, he admitted on Meet the Press that the GOP was “gaming the system” by pretending that expensive middle-class tax cuts will expire in several years.  He argued that the pretense is necessary for the Senate to “shoehorn the bill into the rules” of the Senate.  The “shoehorn” is that to get the bill passed using “Reconciliation” which only requires 50 votes vs 60 votes in the Senate, they have to keep the bill under a specific cost.  As Mulvaney stated, “A lot of this is just a gimmick.”

 

Based on what they haves stated against the Republican’s tax bill, senators such as Susan Collins (R-Maine), Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) they may actually denounce this bill as total nonsense, (which it is actually).

 

The current bill would make the tax rules for the corporations and the super-rich, permanent, while the cuts for the middle and lower class would expire after 5-10 years.  Mulvaney was clear that these tax cuts would bust the budget by $1.5 Trillion, which is ridiculous for those politicians that call themselves “conservatives”.

 

But they just keep saying that the future congresses can just vote to keep the cuts for the middle and lower class in place.  But of course, that would just increase that $1.5 Trillion deficit, to 2.3 Trillion for the next 5 years, which is as usual what the GOP continues to do.  We all know “That’s no way to govern a democratic nation,” but then, the Republicans have never known how to govern anyway.

 

The senate rules that requires these limitations are there for a reason.  It is to prevent the senators from continuing to bust the federal budget. The Senate GOP tax bill would lower personal tax rates but schedule them to start back up in future years. This maneuver still cuts the plan’s nominal sticker price to $1.5 trillion. The Republicans concept is that, once written into the law, Congress would later not allow these provisions to sunset. So the Senate Republican tax plan would cost $1.5 trillion on paper, which is already too much and they are saying that future congresses could just increase that federal deficit by more trillions.  In other words, kick the can down to our kid's, kids.

 

Now, if Bob Corker sticks with his former promise to not vote for any bill that increases the deficit, then that’s one vote against approving the bill.  Right now, the GOP can only loose two senate votes, and with the other four Republicans of Collins, Flake, McCain and Murkowski that have continually been against the bill, there’s a chance today that this “stinky” abortion of a tax cut bill could become another loss for Trump.

 

President Trump said he was giving the middle class a big tax cut for Christmas.  Well, that’s just one more blatant lie from our president.

 

Mr. Mulvaney and many other Republicans argue that the bill’s tax cuts would increase economic growth.  That in turn would increasing federal revenue, and therefore pay for themselves.

 

But there is no credible analysis that says that will happen.  Most say it is total fantasy.  In fact, there are many that predict total fiscal ruin.

 

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center released one report assessing the House version of the plan and the accounting for the economic growth its tax cuts would induce.  The analysts found that growth would offset only about 12% of the plan’s cost over the first decade. After an initial economic boost, bigger deficits and rising interest rates would just drag on the economy.

 

This is a gut-check moment for any senator who has ever claimed to care about the fiscal debt. The Senate is on the verge of further burdening future generations that already face a big bill from decades of budgetary recklessness, mostly coming from the GOP.

 

This GOP tax bill is a total charade and in case anyone thought otherwise, Mr. Mulvaney just confirmed it on national TV.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2017