Month: December 2017

GOP tax bill a comedy of errors that can be gamed by tax attorneys

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Tea-Publicans have been scheming for their tax cut plans for corporations and their plutocrat campaign donors for years, so it would be fair to assume that they had taken the time to work through all of the tax consequences and to get the language of the bill right.

This assumption would be entirely wrong.

In their haste to pass the GOP tax bill in the Senate last week, which included illegible handwritten changes made in the margins of the bill added at the last minute, Tea-Publicans made a number of mistakes that add up to billions of dollars if not corrected.

You’re shocked, I’m sure.

Jordan Weissmann at Slate finds Senate Republicans Made a $289 Billion Mistake in the Handwritten Tax Bill They Passed at 2 a.m. Go Figure.

It appears that Senate Republicans managed to make a $289 billion or so mistake while furiously hand-scribbling edits onto the tax bill they passed in the wee hours of Saturday morning. The problem involves the corporate alternative minimum tax, which the GOP initially planned to repeal, but tossed back into their stew at the last second in order to raise some desperately needed revenue. The AMT is basically a parallel tax code meant to prevent companies from zeroing out their IRS bills. It doesn’t allow businesses to take as many tax breaks but, in theory, is also supposed to have a lower rate.

Except not under the Senate bill. When Mitch McConnell & co. revived the AMT, they absentmindedly left it at its current rate of 20 percent, the same as the new, lower rate of the corporate income tax that the bill included. As a result, many companies won’t be able to use tax breaks that were supposed to be preserved in the legislation, including the extremely popular credit for research and development costs. Corporate accountants started freaking out about this over the weekend, but the situation reached high farce when a group of lawyers from Davis Polk pointed out that, by leaving the AMT intact, Republicans had essentially undermined their bill’s most important changes to the international tax code.

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Evil GOP bastard Paul Ryan declares a class war on Americans

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Last week I told you about the devil’s bargain that the mythical moderate from Maine, Sen. Susan Collins, made in exchange for her vote on the Senate GOP tax bill. The Senate GOP tax bill is also an assault on health care (excerpt):

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has now scored the bill negotiated by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA) to stabilize the “Obamacare” market, and it also comes up woefully short. The CBO just released a report that should worry Sens. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski:

A new report from the Congressional Budget Office dealt what should be a crushing blow to the tax bill: The deal that was crafted to win key senators who objected to the bill’s provision that would leave millions uninsured won’t actually stanch the loss in coverage.

With moderates expressing concern over a provision that would repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate — leaving an estimated 13 million more uninsured by 2027 — Republican leadership hatched a plan to simultaneously pass a bill to stabilize the Obamacare marketplaces, a proposal negotiated by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA).

But this proposal hit a major snag Wednesday when a new CBO report found passing the Alexander-Murray proposal — the centerpiece of which is funding Obamacare’s cost-sharing reduction subsidies that Trump has threatened to pull — would not in fact help mitigate the coverage losses and premium hikes triggered by repealing the individual mandate.

But wait, there’s more. In making this deal with the devil, Sen. Collins forgot about the other devil with whom she actually needed to negotiate, i.e., the GOP’s alleged boy genius and Ayn Rand fanboy, Paul Ryan, “the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin.”

Boy genius says “Deal, what deal? I have no deal with Sen. Collins.”

Steve Benen reports, Paul Ryan wasn’t part of Susan Collins’ tax deal:

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) surprised many when she threw her support behind the Republicans’ tax plan on Friday. Among other things, independent estimates showed that the GOP proposal would leave 13 million Americans without health insurance, and that’s ordinarily the sort of thing the Maine Republican would care about.

As part of an explanation, Collins said she’d reached an agreement with party leaders for votes on two other pieces of legislation, which she believes would mitigate the harm done by the GOP tax plan. There are, however, two problems with this, the first being that the proposals Collins has in mind appear inadequate to address the systemic harm done by her party’s proposal.

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Moral bankruptcy: the GOP has become the party of Roy Moore and Donald Trump

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I have said it before and I will say it again: The GOP has become the party of Roy Moore and Donald Trump.

Back in mid-November when the Roy Moore serial child sexual predator scandal first broke, the RNC pulled financial, ground game support for Roy Moore in Alabama Senate race, and Republican senators, including the Septuagenarian Ninja Turtle, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, were saying they had no reason to doubt the claims of nine women against Roy Moore and that he should withdraw from the race. McConnell Says Roy Moore Should Withdraw From Senate Race in Alabama. The GOP even contemplated extra-constitutional means to run a write-in candidate to replace Roy Moore on the ballot. The Republican Party’s Dream of an Alabama Write-In Candidate Is Dead.

What a difference a few weeks makes. In an instant replay of last year when the GOP was freaking out over the Access Hollywood tape of Donald Trump admitting to being a serial sexual predator to Billie Bush and GOP politicians were fleeing from endorsing their party’s nominee, and Vice Presidential nominee Mike Pence was plotting a “coup” to replace Trump as the GOP nominee for president, God’s Plan for Mike Pence, in a few weeks they all came back to supporting Trump, because GOP tribalism. IOKIYAR.

Serial sexual predator Donald Trump has consistently stood by serial child sexual predator Roy Moore, and he has dragged the GOP along with him. All is forgiven. The GOP has become the party of Roy Moore and Donald Trump. Roy Moore Gets Trump Endorsement and R.N.C. Funding for Senate Race:

President Trump on Monday strongly endorsed Roy S. Moore, the Republican nominee for a United States Senate seat here, prompting the Republican National Committee to restore its support for a candidate accused of sexual misconduct against teenage girls.

Mr. Trump’s endorsement strengthened what had been his subdued, if symbolically significant, embrace of Mr. Moore’s campaign. At Mr. Trump’s direct urging, and to the surprise of some Republican Party officials, the national committee, which severed ties to Mr. Moore weeks ago, opened a financial spigot that could help Mr. Moore with voter turnout in the contest’s closing days.

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Government shutdown looms at midnight on Friday – the GOP owns it

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A quick glance at the calendar says today is Wednesday, December 6, and we are headed for a government shutdown at midnight on Friday, December 8 — yet there doesn’t seem to be any sense  of urgency to keep the government open from Tea-Publicans in Washington, D.C.

A new Politico/Morning Consult poll finds 63 percent of voters want Congress to take any necessary measures to avoid a shutdown. Majority in new poll wants shutdown avoided at all costs.

Too bad, America. Our Twitter-troll-in-chief last week, once again, suggested that he wants to shut down the government, the only American president who has ever openly advocated for a government shutdown because to do so is a failure to execute the duties of the office of the presidency. Trump tells confidants that a government shutdown might be good for him:

President Trump has told confidants that a government shutdown could be good for him politically and is focusing on his hard-line immigration stance as a way to win back supporters unhappy with his outreach to Democrats this fall, according to people who have spoken with him recently.

Over the past 10 days, the president has also told advisers that it is important that he is seen as tough on immigration and getting money for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to two people who have spoken with him. He has asked friends about how a shutdown would affect him politically and has told several people he would put the blame on Democrats.

But of course he would. Donald Trump blames everyone else for his failures. The man has never accepted responsibility for anything he has done in his entire life.

The GOP congressional leadership is currently trying to negotiate a two week stop-gap continuing resolution (CR) to avoid a government shutdown at midnight on Friday. But they can’t seem to come to an agreement amongst themselves because of a revolt from the radical House GOP Freedom Caucus. House conservatives returned to their old ways this week: Playing havoc with spending legislation:

[The calm] came to an abrupt end Monday night, when members of the Freedom Caucus tried to grind progress on tax legislation to a halt.

These hard-right conservatives had no quarrel with the tax plan — they almost all voted for it — but they were looking for a hostage to grab and knew that this one would get everyone’s attention.

Their real target is the 2018 spending bill for federal agencies, along with a clutch of other must-pass items that conservatives oppose.

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Please donate to 9th Annual Bike in a Box

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Providing Bikes to Under-Privileged Children “Lugo Charities Inc. and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks Lodge 385 is pleased to announce that it will be hosting the 9th Annual “Bike In A Box” Christmas event on Saturday, December 9, 2017 from 10:30 am to 12:00 pm at the Elk’s Lodge 385 that is located … Read more