Pierce: Operation 'Please Get a Win' Is Underway [View all]

[babylonsister]

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a13943293/republican-tax-plan-cbo-hurt-poor/


Operation 'Please Get a Win' Is Underway
And it's not going so well.
By Charles P. Pierce
Nov 27, 2017


The Congressional Budget Office is back to harsh the holiday mellow of Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from the state of Wisconsin, and his fellow travelers in both houses of the national legislature. Against the shortest possible odds, as it wends its way through a process controlled almost entirely by Republicans, the proposed tax plan is getting worse, not better, and harsher on the middle and lower classes, not more equitable, and more profitable for the people who buy Ryan his $300-a-bottle vino, not less.

I may have to retire to my chambers briefly to recover from the shock, lest I faint dead away. From those commie bastids at Forbes:

The agency subtracted changes in federal spending for different income groups from the change in federal revenues allocated to each group. Essentially, the analysis looked at how much effect increased taxes from a group and decreased spending on the same group had on overall deficit estimates. The groups hit hardest — the ones providing a reduction to federal deficits — are the poorest. According to the estimates, anyone making less than $30,000 a year would feel the pinch starting in 2019, with the greatest "savings" to the government (again, a combination of either increases in payments or decreases in money spent on a group in services) coming from those who make less than $10,000 a year. By 2010, everyone making $40,000 or less a year would also be contributing to lowering the deficit by paying more in taxes and/or receiving less in services, creating a net savings for the federal government. In that year, the groups making between $10,000 and $20,000 and between $20,000 and $30,000 would each be contributing double what the under-$10,000 group did in savings.

Confronted by the CBO’s estimate, Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah and true son of the soil, told a group of reporters that included Alice Ollstein from Josh’s joint, “I don’t think they’re right.” Well, OK.

A somewhat overlooked factor in the creation of what is the most singularly unpopular piece of legislation since the last time the Congress tried to blow up the Affordable Care Act is that the Republican majorities are so desperate to pass something before each of their members is greeted by three spirits on Christmas Eve, they’re throwing things willy-nilly into the bill in order to wrangle the more recalcitrant among their number to vote to pass it. So they have to put something in to please Ron Johnson, and something else to please Susan Collins, and trying to do both is no way to craft legislation that more than half the country already believes is a scheme to shove even more of the country’s wealth upwards. I know the legislative process can be frustrating and messy, but this is like watching someone bailing out the Titanic with a garden rake.

Meanwhile, the passage of the bill remains far from a sure thing. Steve Daines, Republican of Montana, still says he can’t vote for it and, over the weekend, James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma, told the apparently omnipresent Ms. Ollstein that he is no better than a weak “maybe,” and, fascinatingly, also telling her that the catastrophic failures of Republican economics in Kansas and in his home state are giving him pause. From TPM:

“We can’t ignore the debt and deficit issues,” he said. “As conservatives, we’ve said for a long time that to get ahead of the deficit we have to control our spending and have a growing, healthy economy. Well, if we use all of the tax reductions to just offset, we’ll never get on top of it.” Lankford, a member of the key Senate Finance Committee that hashes out tax policy, said Republicans need to learn from what happened over the past few years in Kansas, where deep tax cuts sent the state into a fiscal crisis, forcing cuts to public school funding, roads, retiree pensions, and state universities. “Those of us in Oklahoma and Kansas and the middle of the country have seen some of this in our own state legislatures,” Lankford said. “It’s important to learn from what we’ve seen.”

Glorioski, is Arthur Laffer’s magic napkin losing its mojo with these people? That would be a Christmas miracle of the first order.

Not for nothing but, if it passes, this tax bill also will devastate higher education, especially at the graduate level, and it will turn churches into dark-money generators, and that’s to say nothing of what will happen down the road to seniors, and the disabled, and people who are simply struggling to get by. But if Ron Johnson can be made happy, and if the president* can Get A Win, and Paul Ryan can stay on someone’s tab, then we can all bask in the warm glow of the holidays, I guess.