Now what?
As we sit on the eve of a tax bill becoming law, with obvious benefits for corporations, (why not 0, since they don't pay taxes anyway? but I digress), I am saddened by the fact that it is NOT real shred-the-code-start-on-a-new-sheet-of-paper tax code. It could have been.
Senators and media shrieking about how bad it is going to be for the GOP next year. I almost have to believe that it is better than what I think it is, because they are losing their minds.
Too much swamp, but you know what is almost as bad? Everyone thinks that Congress is horrible, except their own representative, and that everything is pork, except the "legitimate" projects their Congressman/woman brings to the district. Everyone complains about the tax code, and filing taxes, but try simplifying it. Of course, Congress was stuck, with no Democrats helping at all. But to be clear, they CHOSE not to. They were not iced out, like the GOP was during the first two years of the Obama Administration. Better would have been slashed rates, with NO deductions. No change in revenue, (which I hate that concept, but would gladly have accepted it, to eliminate the code) or better still, get rid of the 16th Amendment, and go with the FAIR Tax, a National Sales Tax.
When Senators talk about Congress and the President SPENDING money on a tax cut, they reveal themselves to be about as anti-Constitutional as you can get. That idea that the money belongs to the government, incidentally, is bipartisan. While most Republicans claim to be about limited government, only a few actually are. Why? The 1964 Presidential election settled the debate over whether Americans really wanted a "limited" government, when Goldwater was trounced by the ghost of Kennedy hovering over the shoulder of LBJ. By the way, it is not THEIR money. It is yours, and mine.
Remember when Senator Stuart Smalley (aka, Al Franken, D-MN) announced his resignation, "in the coming weeks"? He blamed the accusers for lying or bad memories. Of course, his quitting was dependent on Roy Moore becoming a Senator. Democrats were going to (rightly) hang Roy Moore like a noose around the neck of every Republican running for election in 2018. Since Moore lost, no need to pretend the high ground, Democrats are starting to call for Franken to not leave. The Governor has nominated a woman to replace him, what does that say that they want to keep Franken?
Meanwhile, Social Security is in deep doo doo. Politicians learned when W expended every cent of political capital he could to fix it. While I am no fan of the Bushes, I will always respect that he tried to do what is right in this instance, to save a system that was, and is in trouble. But no worries, it only costs an additional 660 million every day to fix it. Entitlement reform is essential to solve the financial problems ahead. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, all are in the red and will only get worse as the Boomers age, and need much more care. Hard choices need to be made, by politicians who can't even take on the leviathan tax code.
Speaking of entitlements, funny how many Democrats argue that the failure of Medicare and Social Security is so far in the future that we will all be dead, so who cares? (a typical Keynesian response) Why can't we use that same excuse in regards to global warming, which is far less certain, even by their own models, and many more years in the future than the upcoming Entitlement Crises?
Did you hear about the Hezbollah arms dealer that we had captured being released as part of the pressure on the Iran deal? oh, and by Hezbollah arms dealer, I mean that he was Putin's arms dealer to the Hezbollah terrorist in Lebanon. Yup, we had him, we released him. No, I didn't read this on Alex Jones, or some other such site, nope, it was politico, more of a center left organization. Here is the link: https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama-hezbollah-drug-trafficking-investigation/
It is a big deal.
Senators and media shrieking about how bad it is going to be for the GOP next year. I almost have to believe that it is better than what I think it is, because they are losing their minds.
Too much swamp, but you know what is almost as bad? Everyone thinks that Congress is horrible, except their own representative, and that everything is pork, except the "legitimate" projects their Congressman/woman brings to the district. Everyone complains about the tax code, and filing taxes, but try simplifying it. Of course, Congress was stuck, with no Democrats helping at all. But to be clear, they CHOSE not to. They were not iced out, like the GOP was during the first two years of the Obama Administration. Better would have been slashed rates, with NO deductions. No change in revenue, (which I hate that concept, but would gladly have accepted it, to eliminate the code) or better still, get rid of the 16th Amendment, and go with the FAIR Tax, a National Sales Tax.
When Senators talk about Congress and the President SPENDING money on a tax cut, they reveal themselves to be about as anti-Constitutional as you can get. That idea that the money belongs to the government, incidentally, is bipartisan. While most Republicans claim to be about limited government, only a few actually are. Why? The 1964 Presidential election settled the debate over whether Americans really wanted a "limited" government, when Goldwater was trounced by the ghost of Kennedy hovering over the shoulder of LBJ. By the way, it is not THEIR money. It is yours, and mine.
Remember when Senator Stuart Smalley (aka, Al Franken, D-MN) announced his resignation, "in the coming weeks"? He blamed the accusers for lying or bad memories. Of course, his quitting was dependent on Roy Moore becoming a Senator. Democrats were going to (rightly) hang Roy Moore like a noose around the neck of every Republican running for election in 2018. Since Moore lost, no need to pretend the high ground, Democrats are starting to call for Franken to not leave. The Governor has nominated a woman to replace him, what does that say that they want to keep Franken?
Meanwhile, Social Security is in deep doo doo. Politicians learned when W expended every cent of political capital he could to fix it. While I am no fan of the Bushes, I will always respect that he tried to do what is right in this instance, to save a system that was, and is in trouble. But no worries, it only costs an additional 660 million every day to fix it. Entitlement reform is essential to solve the financial problems ahead. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, all are in the red and will only get worse as the Boomers age, and need much more care. Hard choices need to be made, by politicians who can't even take on the leviathan tax code.
Speaking of entitlements, funny how many Democrats argue that the failure of Medicare and Social Security is so far in the future that we will all be dead, so who cares? (a typical Keynesian response) Why can't we use that same excuse in regards to global warming, which is far less certain, even by their own models, and many more years in the future than the upcoming Entitlement Crises?
Did you hear about the Hezbollah arms dealer that we had captured being released as part of the pressure on the Iran deal? oh, and by Hezbollah arms dealer, I mean that he was Putin's arms dealer to the Hezbollah terrorist in Lebanon. Yup, we had him, we released him. No, I didn't read this on Alex Jones, or some other such site, nope, it was politico, more of a center left organization. Here is the link: https://www.politico.com/interactives/2017/obama-hezbollah-drug-trafficking-investigation/
It is a big deal.
update. The Senate passed the bill. The House has to vote again due to a technicality. Now, to fund the government. That will be interesting.
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