Vidal
Vidal's JournalRepublicans May Roll All Their Evil Into One Bill With Tax Cuts For The Rich And Obamacare Repeal
"Republicans are considering adding repealing the individual mandate to their tax cuts for the rich bill, which means that not only would your taxes go up but 15 million people would lose their health insurance.
Politico reported:
Conservatives are attempting to revive efforts to gut Obamacare’s individual mandate as part of the Republican overhaul of the tax code. But the House’s top tax writer, while leaving the door open to a measure President Donald Trump supports, said Friday that such a move would complicate the tax package’s prospects, particularly in the Senate."
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/03/tax-reform-plan-obamacare-repeal-244508?lo=ap_b1
Changes to GOP tax bill reduce individual benefits by tens of billions of dollars
"A change made Friday to the House Republican tax bill could reduce the bill’s benefit to the middle class by tens of billions of dollars.
The revised bill changes the way future updates to key individual tax parameters, such as bracket thresholds and the amount of the standard deduction, would be calculated — by using a measure of inflation known as “chained CPI” that tends to grow more slowly than the “unchained” alternative.
The aggregate effect of the change, according to revenue estimates prepared by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, would be to reduce the amount of tax cuts for individuals over the next 10 years by $81 billion.
Those cuts would not affect the GOP’s planned $448 billion tax cut for “pass-through” businesses — firms organized so that their earnings are taxed as individual income — and would increase the benefit to corporations by $7.6 billion. It would modestly increase, by $700 million, the benefit to those paying estate tax in the coming years.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) said in a statement Friday that the new version would “conform the bill with the budget instruction” — a reference to constraints imposed by the special process Republicans are using to avoid a Democratic filibuster in the Senate. The bill cannot increase the federal budget deficit by more than $1.5 trillion, and Thursday’s draft edged right up to that limit.
Also bowing to the budget process, Brady said he removed an international tax provision that “would have possibly jeopardized” the bill’s ability to be considered under Senate rules.
The changes, however, also had a significant fiscal effect that could only exacerbate criticisms from Democrats that the bill largely treats middle-class taxpayers as an afterthought while delivering hundreds of billions of dollars of benefits to corporations and the wealthy.
Under the JCT’s analysis, the initial Tax Cuts and Jobs Act directed about 21 percent of its cuts to individuals of all income levels. Meanwhile, businesses reaped about 68 percent of the benefit, while a planned elimination of the estate tax — which applies only to the wealthy — would make up 11 percent of the overall revenue reduction.
The revised bill lowers the percentage of the individual tax cut from 21 percent to 16 percent of the bill’s aggregate fiscal impact, according to the JCT’s numbers.
Brady’s statement did not address the fiscal implications of the changes, nor did it explain why he chose to use chained CPI rather than look at other revenue-raisers.
“This is another important step on our path to pro-growth tax reform that will deliver more jobs, fairer taxes, and bigger paychecks for people across our country,” Brady said.
Republican leaders say that their tax bill will broadly help middle-class taxpayers, citing an example family of four making $59,000 that would see a $1,182 tax cut in 2018. But that tax cut could erode in the future because of the less generous indexing under chained CPI, as well as the scheduled sunset after 2022 of a tax credit available for filers and non-child dependents.
According to an analysis updated Friday by David Kamin, a New York University law professor who previously served as an economic adviser to the Obama administration, an $1,106 tax cut in 2018 under the GOP bill would become a $457 tax increase in 2027 when compared with current law.
Republicans argue that Congress is unlikely to let the tax credit in question expire. Lawmakers have routinely voted for “extenders” meant to preserve tax provisions that would otherwise sunset for budgetary reasons.
Brady said additional, “more substantive” changes to the bill are coming Monday, when the Ways and Means Committee launches a multiday “markup” to debate and potentially amend the bill."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/changes-to-gop-tax-bill-reduce-individual-benefits-by-tens-of-billions-of-dollars/2017/11/03/a11f1240-c0cf-11e7-8444-a0d4f04b89eb_story.html?utm_term=.6dbbfef58eb1
Trump breaches boundaries by saying DOJ should be going after Democrats
President Trump on Friday repeatedly called on the Department of Justice and FBI to investigate his Democratic political opponents, a breach of the traditional executive branch boundaries designed to prevent the criminal justice system from becoming politicized.
Trump urged federal law enforcement to “do what is right and proper” by launching criminal probes of former presidential rival Hillary Clinton and her party — a surprising use of his bully pulpit considering he acknowledged a day earlier that presidents are not supposed to intervene in such decisions.
In a flurry of accusatory morning tweets, Trump claimed there was mounting public pressure for new Clinton probes, including over her campaign’s joint fundraising agreement with the Democratic National Committee that effectively gave her some control over the party’s finances, strategy and staffing before the primaries began.
Trump invoked Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who had said that she believed the Democratic primaries were rigged in Clinton’s favor based on details of the arrangement in a new book by former DNC interim chair Donna Brazile. Using his pejorative nickname for Warren, Trump tweeted: “Pocahontas just stated that the Democrats, lead [sic] by the legendary Crooked Hillary Clinton, rigged the Primaries! Lets [sic] go FBI & Justice Dept.”
Trump also called for probing the deleted emails from Clinton’s private server while she was secretary of state, as well as the sale of a uranium company to Russia and the international business of Democratic super-lobbyist Tony Podesta, the brother of John D. Podesta, who served as Clinton’s campaign chairman.
“People are angry,” Trump wrote in one tweet. “At some point the Justice Department, and the FBI, must do what is right and proper. The American public deserves it!”
Trump amplified his message later Friday morning, as he spoke to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before he departed for a 12-day trip to Asia.
“I’m really not involved with the Justice Department,” Trump said. “I’d like to let it run itself. But honestly, they should be looking at the Democrats .?.?. And a lot of people are disappointed in the Justice Department, including me.”
Trump has long been irritated, and at times outright angry, with Attorney General Jeff Sessions for refusing to prosecute Clinton and for not better protecting him from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s wide-ranging probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, the president’s advisers have said.
Trump made his displeasure clear in a Thursday radio interview on “The Larry O’Connor Show.”
“You know, the saddest thing is, because I am the president of the United States, I am not supposed to be involved with the Justice Department. I’m not supposed to be involved with the FBI,” Trump said. “I’m not supposed to be doing the kind of things I would love to be doing and I am very frustrated by it.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-breaches-boundaries-by-saying-doj-should-be-going-after-democrats/2017/11/03/1c157c08-c0aa-11e7-97d9-bdab5a0ab381_story.html?tid=pm_politics_pop&utm_term=.a2550743b730
State Dept. letter could pave way for deporting 300,000 immigrants with protected status
"Protected status no longer justified for Central Americans and Haitians in U.S., State Dept. says"
"More than 300,000 Central Americans and Haitians living in the United States under a form of temporary permission no longer need to be shielded from deportation, the State Department told Homeland Security officials this week, a few days ahead of a highly anticipated DHS announcement about whether to renew that protection.
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent a letter to acting DHS secretary Elaine Duke to inform her that conditions in Central America and Haiti that had been used to justify the protection no longer necessitate a reprieve for the migrants, some of whom have been allowed to live and work in the United States for 20 years under a program known as Temporary Protected Status (TPS)."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/central-americans-and-haitians-no-longer-need-protected-status-state-dept-says/2017/11/03/647cbd5c-c0ba-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_protected-621pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.e2821fad9dae
Mr. Bone Spurs Speaks
How can Trump criticize the judge who said Bergdahl doesn't need to go to prison?
The man is a coward who cheated to get out of the draft.
Surprise! Trump Could Save Millions From GOP Tax Plan
This is just stating the obvious.
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-11-02/surprise-trump-could-save-millions-from-gop-tax-plan
Franken's letter to Sessions
Go Al!
"Sen. Al Franken writes incredibly intense letter to Jeff Sessions demanding answers for his lies"
"Once again, developments in the ongoing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election have brought to light evidence that you failed to tell the truth about your interactions with Russian operatives during the campaign, as well as your awareness of Russian contacts by other members of the Trump campaign team. This is another example in an alarming pattern in which you, the nation's top law enforcement officer, apparently failed to tell the truth, under oath, about the Trump team's contacts with agents of Russia-a hostile foreign power that interfered in the 2016 election. We must get to the bottom of what happened so that we can prevent it from happening again, and I am deeply troubled that this newest revelation strongly suggests that the Senate-and the American public-cannot trust your word."
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/11/3/1712343/-Sen-Al-Franken-writes-incredibly-intense-letter-to-Jeff-Sessions-demanding-answers-for-his-lies
This proves his demented desperate dementia.
"Six times in 24 hours, desperate Donald calls for DOJ and FBI to investigate Hillary"
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/11/3/1712346/-Six-times-in-24-hours-desperate-Donald-calls-for-DOJ-and-FBI-to-investigate-Hillary
Disappointing Friday
I was expecting more indictments to be unsealed and delivered today.
Is anyone else disappointed this didn't happen?
When can we expect to see more arrests? I'm getting impatient!
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