Just kidding: the WP Editorial Board is unhinged in their typical way
A win for the wealthy, the entitled and the irresponsible
REPUBLICANS IN Congress passed a huge tax bill Wednesday, in what is being hailed as a major win for President Trump and his party. In time, however, it very likely will be remembered as an ignominious moment for Republicans.
To be sure, there will be some unmitigated winners. The bill is a victory for wealthy heirs, who will no longer have to pay estate taxes on inheritance worth up to $22 million. It helps tax dodgers and their lawyers, who will have some potentially huge new loopholes to exploit. Because the drafting process was so hasty and sloppy, no doubt there are many hidden in the text that even its authors do not realize are there.
Like the heirs of the rich people who own and run the WP, and those who sit on the Editorial Board.
The bill is a victory for corporations that look like the Trump Organization, the president’s privately held real estate business. “Pass-through†businesses like many of those within the Trump Organizationget a new tax break. Other provisions single out real estate for special consideration in the tax code. The public can only guess at how much the president will personally benefit from the tax bill he is about to sign, because he has defied decades of bipartisan tradition by refusing to release his tax returns. In that sense, the bill is also a win for nontransparent government.
While there are certainly big big companies that are pass throughs, a goodly chunk of small business run by middle class Americans are also pass throughs, and would see their taxes go way down.
The bill is a victory for the discredited theory of trickle-down economics. It embodies the notion that big tax cuts for the wealthy will benefit low- and middle-class workers rather than simply enrich the already well-off.
Two points: first, even if it doesn’t trickle down, the middle class is getting a tax cut. Period. How well did the middle class do under the policies of the Democrats and under Obama? Not well. Second, who really cares if people who make a lot of money get to keep the money they earned? Why is this a thing? How does this harm anyone? There are multiple companies who are already saying they will pump more money into the economy, such as AT&T and Boeing.
The bill is a victory for corrosive partisanship. Republicans could have hashed out a better, bipartisan plan, but they never seriously tried. Instead, they added to the bill a stealth repeal of a key piece of Obamacare and a provision allowing drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Remember how the Democrats worked with Republicans on Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and the Stimulus? Oh, right.
Most of all, the bill is a victory for fiscal irresponsibility. Some of its provisions, such as lowering the corporate tax rate, would have been worthwhile if they had been paid for by closing loopholes or raising other federal revenue. Instead, the bill will make the nation’s debt trajectory even worse, by a trillion-plus dollars, even after accounting for new economic growth. The bill’s mild potential effects on competitiveness and growth are not worth such a steep price tag.
Remember all the complaints from the WPEB during the Obama years, when the debt virtually doubled? Or how the Stimulus was simply small short term growth that wasn’t sustained even through Obama’s first term, while shoving a trillion in debt on America’s grandkids?
Anyhow, you know this bill must be great if outlets like the WP are freaking out in this manner. Do you know what should have been put in the tax bill? An exception for companies that are in the news business. Should have left their taxes at the current rate while doing away with any “loopholes”. If they love high taxes so much, let them pay them by law, because, for all their caterwauling, they won’t stroke a check to the IRS.
This is a gap.
In 2018, 80% of households get tax cuts.
In our poll, 17% of people think they're getting tax cuts. https://t.co/phMSGQshIG via @WSJ— Richard Rubin (@RichardRubinDC) December 19, 2017
Crossed at Right Wing News.
Its the resistance. Pretty soon they will develop themselves and underground and on MSNBC they will have catch phrases like “The old man burned his shoes in the closet” “The clock that struck midnight was broken.” “Wounds my heart with a melodious langour.”
And the little lefties will get out their posters and run thru the streets protesting the fact that those stupid Americans have jobs and money to spend, because its totally screwed up their plan to turn America into a communist wasteland.
The_Washington_Post
Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Post, is Amazon’s chief executive and biggest shareholder.
I will give some props to The Washington Post: I am starting to see a real effort at solid reporting, with articles which do not have an obvious left-wing bias. Yeah, the editorial board is still liberal Democratic — though not far-left socialist — but they are allowing some factual reporting which doesn’t cleave to Chuck Schumer’s desires to get through.
Remember so long ago, months even, when your taxes would be so simple you could do them on a postcard, when the rich would HATE tRump’s tax plan, the GOP would cut the corporate tax rate but eliminate all the tax shelter loopholes that allows a profitable GE to pay no taxes for years, they would tax hedge fund incomes as normal income not as gains, how people like tRump would pay more taxes and the middle class would get YUUUUGE tax cuts. The Middle Class Miracle. Good times, back then. They cut the corporate rate but forgot to close the loopholes. They opened other loopholes, especially for real estate investors. Their scam is politically smart (we cut taxes!) but fiscally stupid (we’re going broke!).
The truth is the Donor Class wanted from the Republicans what they always want – more of everything. And the GOP delivered. Sure, sure, it will add $1.5 trillion more to the already additional $10 trillion new debt projected for the next decade (unless the GOP slashes Medicare and Social Security as promised – that’s where the real money is, the elderly).
So while the economy has been in a steady recovery for the past 8 years, stock market soaring, unemployment dropping, inflation in check, wages strangely flat, record corporate profits, the GOP has the federal government borrow trillions to give to the wealthy and corporations. Does that make sense?
tRump plans to sign the Millionaire Relief Act AFTER Jan 1 to avoid the required automatic $120 BILLION cut to Medicare in 2018. This will push the Medicare slashing to 2019 so is less likely to hurt GOP chances in the 2018 midterms. Slashing Medicare to give tax breaks to the wealthy – GOP 101. Draining the swamp, indeed. Are any of you or your family on Medicare? When your premiums skyrocket in a couple of years, or when your services are cut, will you remember that the GOP caused it this week? The GOP doesn’t think so either.
We just enrolled in Medicare and because of our income our premiums are over 3 times higher than the minimum, so we’re subsidizing the moochers, but that’s OK. America has been very, very good to us, so we’re happy to give back. Are any of you or your family on Medicare? Do you pay the minimum? If so, sit back and enjoy your care at my expense. You’re welcome.
Also, the GOP neglected to re-authorize CHIP leaving nearly 2 million poor kids without health insurance. I guess they were too busy rewarding millionaires to worry about kids.
No. And neither do you. Remember when the Obama administration added more tax regulations to the tax code? Remember when the Obama administration wanted to license tax preparers effectively shutting down smaller tax preparation companies in favor of larger ones – all of whom were donors to Obama?
Once again, your hypocrisy and lack of facts is showing.
As for the tax plan itself:
There’s no question one can find “analyses” to confirm one’s position.
For example:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/factcheck/ap-fact-check-trumps-middle-class-miracle-favors-wealthy/ar-BBH69ya?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout
I do remember when Paul (Lyin’) Ryan said this: “We are making things so simple that you can do your taxes on a form the size of a postcard.” — remarks when the tax bill came out Nov. 2. (Granted that was over 1 month ago).
Let’s mostly gloss over the fact that the bill will lower taxes for a shocking 80.4 percent of Americans, according to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center.
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/model-estimates/conference-agreement-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act-dec-2017/t17-0318-major-provisions
Thanks, little guy, you never disappoint with your whining.
And you apparently didn’t read the article:
THE FACTS: The tax cuts are not nearly as lopsided as many Democrats are portraying them. Almost all of the middle class would initially pay less in taxes.
For the next eight years, the vast majority of middle-class taxpayers — those earning between $49,000 and $86,000 — will receive a tax cut, albeit a small one. In 2018, nine-tenths of the middle class will get a cut, according to the Tax Policy Center. In 2025, 87 percent will. The tax cut won’t be very big: just $930 next year for the middle one-fifth of taxpayers, the center’s analysis concludes. For those paid twice a month, that’s about $40 a paycheck.
The very article you want to cite to claim how wrong people on the right are actually shows you to be wrong.
Feel the burn.
There is no burn. The tax cuts for the working classes (remember the median household income is about $58,000/yr) will make little difference in their lives.
I’m getting about a $20,000 cut.
Feel the burn.
I’m getting about a $20,000 cut.
Well good for you, little guy.
Perhaps you can donate it to the Hillary
Clinton Defense Fund.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/prosecutors-ask-fbi-agents-info-uranium-one-deal-n831436
There ya go. Keep thinking that you know what makes or does not make a difference in people’s lives.
The fact of the matter is that you keep screaming that only the wealthy will benefit from the tax cuts. Your own article says that’s a lie.
Wow, a tax cut to the people who pay taxes is such a strange occurrence to liberals. Again, I love all “give-away to the rich†slogans. No one is giving anything to anybody. They’re simply keeping more of what was theirs to begin with.
j,
Do you agree that in the US we need to pay taxes to support Defense, Social Security and Medicare, interest on the debt etc? How do we pay them without taxes?
Conservatives want to force the working classes to pay more and more (e.g., flat tax) and have the well to do pay less. But don’t the wealthy benefit more in America? They have much more to protect, they use more resources and on and on. The median household income is only about $58,000 – half of households make more, half make less. We shouldn’t be talking about cutting the poor’s taxes by $100 a year, but trying to figure out ways to get more money in their pockets to start with.
LOL…you mean like giving them jobs beside the moron Obama who had everyone working at McDonalds for 12 bucks an hour and the left all in a tizzy saying that a job flipping hamburgers should be a real job with 401k and health insurance and a living wage.
You mean we should have a really good economy by allowing corporations to expand and create jobs because people are buying stuff?
Is that what you mean when you say:
Because that’s just exactly what we are trying to do with bringing jobs back to America and encouraging businesses to hire by reducing this massive regulations and getting rid of that absolutely stupid Obamacare crap which was paralyzing corporations into freezing hiring because no one knew what was coming next with the regulation crazed socialists in the White House.
But somehow I think your talking about taking money from the rich and giving it via welfare to the poor to keep them voting for your communist manifesto.
Fargo,
No. We’d like the working classes to have more economic leverage to finally have some of the spoils flow their way rather than having them all be given to the wealthy by policy. The US labor, immigration, trade, monetary, fiscal, patent/copyright and tax laws all suppress wages of the working classes while rewarding the wealthy.
Because the Billionaire Relief Act adds $1.5 trillion to the debt, it automatically triggers massive cuts in Medicare. The extremists on the right find this acceptable – paying for tax cuts for the wealthy by cutting benefits to the elderly. Do you consider Medicare to be a communist program? Social Security? Do you consider these programs to be welfare?
Taxes are paid by earners who actually earn money. Your tripwire words are right out of the communist manifesto and the speeches of V. Lenin. You speak like a communist. Economic leverage.
In other words you want what billionaires have. Like all 25 of them in the USA. You want what millionaires have.
Aint happening here. In Russia, In China or name any one of the other 202 countries around the world. It aint happening.
Wealth is a system in which one earns their way, lucks into it or is rewarded for extraordinary talent that people on the whole are willing to pay to partake. Movie stars, singers, comedianes, artists, those whose talents offer intrinsic value to their benefactors.
The billionaire tax relief act as you like to call it benefits those who pay the most. Those who pay the least are not going to necessarily benefit from something they don’t pay into.
Like I’m not gonna get a job at Harvard based upon claiming I’m an Indian for a couple of reasons. 1 is I am not an indian and 2. My mama didn’t claim I had high cheek bones ergo I’m an indian and can claim all those benefits associated with being an Indian. 3. I’m not a socialist whose wife is under investigation for fraud. Who has economically benefited from his talents. Had he not been worth a sheet then he would not be well paid to speak his version of BS to the public.
You who claim you are so wealthy therefore you are not going to benefit from Social security that you paid into because if you are so rich then a check from the government for 2300 dollars or whatever it is they are paying you is but a mere pittance.
Catch phrases are all so cute but your answer is enemic at best. Now all of a sudden you have made the leap that tax cuts are being paid for by the Elderly. LOLOL
Do you not remember this?
Obama plans to cut between $200 billion and $380 billion more from Social Article found in the Atlantic mag…a far left mag.
Or This:
President Obama’s proposed 2016 budget takes a major swipe at waste and abuse in Medicare Advantage plans for the elderly, seeking more than $36 billion in cuts over the next decade to curb costly government overpayments to the industry.
Or This:
Contrary to their expectations, however, it has been the Obama campaign that has been forced to defend its $716 billion in cuts to the Medicare program, cuts that Mitt Romney promises to repeal.
AND ALL OF THIS WITH NO TAX CUTS. This is why the left has no credibility left with the American people. This is why Trump won. You guys refuse to admit reality. Obama was raping medicare to pay for his Obamacare. Not to mention our Military is about ready to collapse to pay for Obamacare. That’s a subject for another discussion.
So all I can say is what I have said before. If you would actually speak truths here you might actually get an honest debate but you want to castrate Trump for cutting Medicare when Obama decimated medicare himself but Trump is evil and Obama is AWESOME.
Non starter. Fact Checkometer just exploded over here at my poor and humble house.
Its all democratic talking points because they are terrified that Obama and HRC might end up with pardons before their famous Russian collusion case is finally finished, so they have to distract to something else.
When Trump wants to rebuild Detroit the left will be screaming he is hitler and the GOP ate biggots to think Detroit and Chicago need help. Racists they will scream.
Its why the GOP never touches the black communities and the left leaves them to rot so they keep voting for Democrats.
No matter what Trump does, this is the same strategy they employed on GWB the minute they realized the war was making him hugely popular and they couldn’t have that.
If you like YOUR money, you can keep YOUR money.
The lib Dems continue to operate under the false impression it’s their money.
it’s not just liberal democrats who believe it. why do you think they still use base line budgeting and static scoring for the budget even though republicans are in charge of the house.
Will be fun watching the democrats defend 24 seats this senate election. They will defend probably 18 of those but I can easily see them giving up 6 seats and the GOP losing 4. In the end it would not surprise me to see the GOP with a 54 seat lead after 2018 elections.
Manchin is running against Trump whose popularity is like 65 percent in WV. Notice him walking that tightrope as his handlers tell him that if he helps trump he will be primaried. Sad. America suffers while Michael Moore and Bannon run the country.
“Have the well to do pay less…â€. We still have one of the most progressive tax systems of any nation on earth, a fact liberals conveniently forget.
They don’t forget, they ignore.
Except for Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, etc, you are right.
Vacation spots like North Korea, Syria, Paraguay, UAE etc have much lower top rates than us. Romania has a flat tax.
Taxes are what we pay for civilized society – Oliver Wendell Holmes
Was the 39.6% top marginal rate onerous, but the new 37% is fair?
Actually I was wrong. Obama actually did cut taxes by 1.2 trillion dollars.
ONEPOINTTWOTRILLION DOLLARS. and cut Medicare by 716 Billion.
Obama cut taxes.
Obama cut taxes by 1.2 trillion over 8 years. That’s roughly 1.5 trillion over 10 and he CUT MEDICARE
OBAMA CUT TAXES AND CUT MEDICARE.
But only Trump is the authoritarian crazed madman.
OBAMA CUT TAXES BY 1.2 Trillion over *8* years.
LOLOL….You are an unhinged madman and even Poor Old Joe Manchin from WV had to admit there was some good stuff in this bill.
Fargo,
Cutting taxes during the worst recession since the Great Depression was used to stimulate the economy, so it made sense. Cutting taxes during an economic expansion, especially with a budget deficit, makes no sense. Look at a plot of unemployment vs time since the Great Recession and you’ll note the steady decline in the unemployment rate.
No, Obama did not cut $716 billion from Medicare.
Lets fact check this:
From time magazine totally, 1000 percent in the tank for Obama.
Since the Romney-Ryan campaign is hammering the Obama-Biden ticket on the Affordable Care Act’s $716 billion in cuts to Medicare, it seems useful to put this figure in context and explain exactly what programs within Medicare lose funding under the health care law.
First, the context. The Congressional Budget Office estimates Medicare spending over the next 10 years will be about $7.5 trillion. This means the ACA’s Medicare cuts account for less than 10% of overall Medicare spending. The program is not being gutted. Even with the ACA cuts, the CBO says the cost of Medicare is expected to grow from about $500 billion in 2012 to nearly $900 billion by 2022.
NOTICE they do NOT DENY the cuts…they try to spin them.
Once again. You lie to defend an undefendable position. Rather its good policy or bad policy for tax cuts during expansion is NOT what we are debating. YOU lied and conflated issues to try and prove an unprovable point.
FACTOMETER is exploding at my house when you post a comment.
Cutting taxes during the worst recession since the Great Depression was used to stimulate the economy, so it made sense…….
More reading comprehension problems? Poor economic reasoning? Did you skip Econ in trade school?
Anyway, adding to the national debt by giving tax breaks to the wealthy when the economy is near full employment is dumb, even by the ideological logic of Con Men.
You see, a contracting economy with 10% unemployment and deflationary concerns is different from an expanding economy with 4% unemployment and nascent inflationary concerns (this is why tRump’s Fed is considering putting the brakes to the economy – to protect the investor class by kicking millions out of work).
It is possible that some of tRump’s econ advisors (trump is not savvy) could be seeking a double whammy by throttling the economy by raising the Fed rate AND then “stimulating” with yuuuge tax giveaways to the wealthy and corporations. Of course, tax cuts to the wealthy is an inefficient and ineffective way to stimulate an economy. This rewards the investor/political donor class in two ways!
Are you asking yourself because the rest of us know the answer as it pertains to you.
Anyway, adding to the national debt by giving tax breaks to the wealthy when the economy is near full employment is dumb, even by the ideological logic of Con Men.
Estimates are that the debt will increase by a measly $44 billion a year. The trillion dollar number that you keep throwing around was based on the Obama economy and not a growing robust economy.
Secondly, you keep harping on “tax breaks to the wealthy” as if they 1) are the only people getting tax cuts and 2) they somehow don’t deserve to keep the money they earn like the rest of the people in the country.
Thirdly, with full employment, we are starting to see the rise of wages. Not artificially inflated by some liberal policy based on what they think is “fair,” but because businesses are having to compete and pay more for good workers. Your position is that investment in businesses and higher wages is a bad thing.
We all understand that your hatred of the economy getting better is based on your hatred of conservatives and Trump. We understand that you and people of your ilk would love to keep people in low paying jobs while stealing money for programs that nor only don’t help the economy, but hurt it.
We get it.
You hate America.
the new mantra for economic illiterates:
letting people keep their own money is not spending, ommmmmm.
letting people keep their own money never causes deficits, ommmmmm.
deficits and debt are caused by spending, ommmmm.
letting people keep their own money is not spending, unless like government bureaucrats, you believe all the money belongs to the government.
letting people keep their own money never causes deficits, ommmmm.
repeat until it sinks in.
J-wrong as usual. https://www.forbes.com/sites/thetaxfoundation/2015/03/20/americas-tax-code-is-more-progressive-than-you-think/#408b80425864
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/01/08/the-us-tax-system-just-keeps-on-getting-more-and-more-progressive/#302ed8b517b2
I love America. I hate the new Conservative movement and the complicit Repubs and Dems who are destroying America with their misguided notions.
We get it.
The NuCons based their ideology on the rantings of a Hollywood screenwriter/novelist.
You don’t love America. Just like the guy screaming loudest about AGW just said he uses an ATV to go hunting. Those CO2 spewing ATV’s that destroy private land. The communists hate private land and yet you go on your buddies land with an ATV and destroy his land spewing C02 killing birds with a muzzle loader.
You have to be one hell of a shot to kill Quail with a muzzle loader. YOu earn millions a year, Was the founder of a large corporation who is raping cancer victims with your medicine that probably costs 150k per year to take.
And here you are.
AT a right site attacking each of us personally for our beliefs, telling us you hate us. Oh sure you hate our ideology but de facto you hate us.
Hate and bigotry and communisms seeps from every post and the far, radical lefty rails at everything we stand for.
You got one thing right. You definitely HATE.
All evidence to the contrary.
Time and time again you have said that you are against freedom and believe that they government is more important than the people.
That notion and your beliefs are contrary to ideals upon which America was founded.
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