United States Congress of Fail (Part 3)

[onekidanddone]

Okay that's it. I'm done. Please name me one man who has not been accused of assault? 

[formergothardite]

That picture of him groping her while she slept is disturbing. It sounds like all these folks just need to go so we can get better people in. There HAS to be better people out there. 

The GOP doesn't get to act all outraged over this when they are turning a blind eye to Trump and Moore. 

[GrumpyGran]

3 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

Okay that's it. I'm done. Please name me one man who has not been accused of assault? 

I want to know more about this. If Al Franken dragged a sleeping woman into a room and groped her breasts, he should go. But that's not at all what I have heard about this.

[apple1]

Please don't make excuses for Al Franken because of the D after his name.

Likewise - no excuses for Roy Moore. No excuses for Donald Trump. No excuses for Bush the older.

No excuses for the laundry list of offenders, whoever they are.

 

No excuses. Period.

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, GrumpyGran said:

I want to know more about this. If Al Franken dragged a sleeping woman into a room and groped her breasts, he should go. But that's not at all what I have heard about this.

Quoting myself here. Just watched a piece on this and ick. Really very ick. The picture was apparently taken on an airplane while she was sleeping. The whole story is just NO NO NO!

Honestly, I'm beginning to think about all the men I have known in my life and wondering how many of them who seemed okay to me were really creepy assaulters. 

[Rachel333]

It looks like he's not actually touching her in the picture, but I would still feel very violated by a picture like that.

He has apologized and called for an ethics investigation of himself. Tweeden has accepted his apology and says she is not calling for him to step down right now.

Another woman has accused him of harassment, but there's nothing sexual with that account. He apparently argued with her about budget numbers on a talk show and then called her at home three times to continue the argument.

[fraurosena]

Al Franken has released a statement. Although his behavior was repugnant, his apology seems sincere and I find it to be an example of how one should react to these accusations.

Full text: Al Franken apologizes for allegedly groping woman

Quote

“The first thing I want to do is apologize: to Leeann, to everyone else who was part of that tour, to everyone who has worked for me, to everyone I represent, and to everyone who counts on me to be an ally and supporter and champion of women. There's more I want to say, but the first and most important thing—and if it's the only thing you care to hear, that's fine—is: I'm sorry.

“I respect women. I don't respect men who don't. And the fact that my own actions have given people a good reason to doubt that makes me feel ashamed.

“But I want to say something else, too. Over the last few months, all of us—including and especially men who respect women—have been forced to take a good, hard look at our own actions and think (perhaps, shamefully, for the first time) about how those actions have affected women.

“For instance, that picture. I don't know what was in my head when I took that picture, and it doesn't matter. There's no excuse. I look at it now and I feel disgusted with myself. It isn't funny. It's completely inappropriate. It's obvious how Leeann would feel violated by that picture. And, what's more, I can see how millions of other women would feel violated by it—women who have had similar experiences in their own lives, women who fear having those experiences, women who look up to me, women who have counted on me.

“Coming from the world of comedy, I've told and written a lot of jokes that I once thought were funny but later came to realize were just plain offensive. But the intentions behind my actions aren't the point at all. It's the impact these jokes had on others that matters. And I'm sorry it's taken me so long to come to terms with that.

“While I don't remember the rehearsal for the skit as Leeann does, I understand why we need to listen to and believe women’s experiences.

“I am asking that an ethics investigation be undertaken, and I will gladly cooperate.

“And the truth is, what people think of me in light of this is far less important than what people think of women who continue to come forward to tell their stories. They deserve to be heard, and believed. And they deserve to know that I am their ally and supporter. I have let them down and am committed to making it up to them.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

The Repugs don't care, just so billionaires and big corporations are happy, they'll feel like they've done their job: "The Finance 202: 'Biggest tax cut in American history' isn't popular with many Americans"

There are lots of links and charts in the article, which is a good read.

Spoiler

Addressing a black-tie crowd at the National Building Museum on Thursday night, Vice President Pence hailed congressional progress toward what he said would be the “biggest tax cut in American history.” 

As he spoke, less than a mile away the Senate Finance Committee was racing to wrap up work on a tax bill that will hand large cuts to the wealthiest while raising taxes on those earning between $10,000 and $75,000 over the next decade. That’s according to a new analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation. (And Pence's claim, which President Trump also has made repeatedly, is false, as my colleague Glenn Kessler has demonstrated)

Republicans are making rapid strides toward approving a tax package, the cornerstone of their agenda. The House passed its version of a bill with some room to spare Thursday just two weeks after it was introduced. Senate prospects are less assured, considering the party’s narrower margin and blowback from a critical number of Republicans there, although the Finance Committee approved its plan along party-lines late Thursday night. 

But if internal disagreement doesn’t stymie it first, the party’s argument for the project is on a collision course with the nonpartisan scorekeepers’ assessment of it. 

From The Washington Post’s Mike DeBonis and Damian Paletta’s report on Thursday’s action: 

The House bill delivers more than 80 percent of its overall cuts to corporations, business owners and wealthy families who are subject to the federal estate tax, according to estimates released by the Joint Committee on Taxation. But most middle-class Americans would see an immediate tax cut because of a lowering of individual tax rates, the near-doubling of the standard deduction and a larger child tax credit.

But under the House bill, many households that itemize their deductions — taking advantage of write-offs for state income taxes, medical expenses and more — could see immediate tax increases. In future years, the benefits of the bill for individuals wane because of the phaseout of a key tax credit and because the bill would change how the government calculates inflation, moving them more quickly into higher tax brackets.

The Senate plan has significant problems of its own when it comes to lower- and middle-income workers. To comply with the chamber’s budget rules, the bill prioritizes permanent corporate cuts over breaks for individuals that sunset after a decade. But those at the bottom of the income scale would see tax hikes sooner than that. My colleague Heather Long explains: 

Tax increases for households earning $10,000 to $30,000 would start in 2021 and grow sharply from there, JCT found. By 2027, most Americans earning $75,000 a year or less would be forced to pay more in taxes, while people earning more than $100,000 a year would continue to pay less. The report generated intense debate on Capitol Hill.

Most of the hit to poor and working-class Americans would come from the Senate Republicans’ push to insert a major health care change into the tax bill. Republicans are repealing the requirement that all Americans buy health insurance or face a penalty, a move that would lead to 13 million more uninsured Americans, the Congressional Budget Office has said. Many of those people earn modest incomes and currently receive tax credits and subsidies from the government to help them afford insurance. If the Senate GOP bill becomes law, premiums are expected to rise and millions would likely opt not to buy insurance anymore, meaning their tax breaks would go away, explained Thomas Barthold, head of the JCT.

Voters may not have studied the JCT’s distributional tables, but they certainly get the point. A Quinnipiac poll released this week showed they disapprove of the GOP tax plan by 52 to 25 percent. And by 59 to 33 percent, they think the proposals benefit the wealthy at the expense of the middle class. 

The Post's Glenn Kessler:

... < excellent and depressing chart >

Republican voters unsurprisingly view their party’s tax agenda much more favorably than the broader electorate, approving of it by 60 to 15 percent, the survey found. That may be all Republican lawmakers care to consider as they stoke a sense of urgency behind notching a quick win on a tax package.

But the Quinnipiac poll also found that Democrats have a 13-point edge over Republicans on the generic congressional ballot — a result that tracks with a recent Marist poll showing Democrats with a 15-point advantage. As the Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter wrote Thursday, “Do not ignore what’s right in front of us. A wave is building. If I were a Republican running for Congress, I’d be taking that more seriously than ever.”

...

 

[GreyhoundFan]

From Jennifer Rubin's lips to Rufus' ears: "The House majority is slipping away from Republicans"

Spoiler

Cook Political Reports tells us:

If it wasn’t already clear, last Tuesday’s election results confirmed a political atmosphere that would seriously endanger the House GOP’s majority in 2018. In Virginia, turnout was up 20 percent over 2013 in localities won by Hillary Clinton, compared to 13 percent in localities carried by President Trump. Not only did Democrat Ralph Northam outperform pre-election polls, Democrats shocked by nearly winning control of Virginia’s House of Delegates. …

Republicans held onto just two of their 17 seats in districts Clinton carried, and are headed to a recount in a third. The results suggest Northern Virginia Rep. Barbara Comstock (VA-10) is the single most vulnerable GOP incumbent in the country.

Earlier in the year, Democrats went into a funk at the time over four special House elections, but Cook’s take is that their performance in them was overall a positive sign. “Democrats outperformed Clinton anywhere from one point (GA-06) to 13 points (KS-04), [and] the balance of evidence suggests Democrats would be the ever-so-slight favorites to reclaim the House if the elections were held today. New congressional generic ballot polls showing Democrats with double-digit leads only bolster that assessment.”

Cook is careful to remind us that the elections are a year away and scandal and retirements could take down more incumbents. However, it’s also very possible the climate gets worse for Republicans. A special counsel report, the failure of the tax bill (or passage of a strongly disliked tax bill), or a stock market blip could make for an even worse midterm election for the House GOP.

By changing ratings in 7 races (6 to favor Democrats), Cook leaves Democrats with more than four dozen competitive possibilities. Among the toss-up-or-worse seats, Republicans have 18 at risk, and Democrats have only 4. In the “leans”/”likely” category, Republicans have 45 seats that aren’t entirely solid. Democrats have 16. (If you separate out just the “lean” seats, Republicans have 20 at risk while Democrats have only 5.)

Over in the Senate, it’s not likely but certainly possible Democrats take the majority. It is increasingly likely that Doug Jones will win the Alabama seat, narrowing the GOP majority to 51-49. If the two most vulnerable Republican seats flip (Nevada and Arizona) and red-state Democrats hold on (Missouri and Indiana are the most vulnerable), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his Republicans are back in the minority.

If the Democrats take one if not both houses, Republicans and President Trump specifically should panic. With majorities come control of committee oversight and subpoena power. The filibuster would remain to block Democratic-sponsored legislation, but one could image Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) rounding up a number of Republican votes (Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, John McCain of Arizona, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Steve Daines of Montana, etc.) on health-care or infrastructure measures while more-generous immigration legislation along the lines of the Gang of Eight (which passed the Senate) could get through both bodies.

It is, however, the prospect of impeachment (if not removal) that would most alarm the White House. While it seems exceptionally unlikely that President Trump would be removed from office (two-thirds of the Senate would be required to vote for removal), by that point, Trump’s presidency could well be in shambles with the 2020 election looming.

In short, despite their shellacking in 2016, Democrats have a reasonable chance of staging a rather quick comeback in Congress and in state races (Republican governors will be defending in 26 states, some in blue states such as Illinois, Maine and Maryland). Former president Barack Obama, fairly or not, is blamed for hollowing out the Democratic Party; Trump could do the same for Republicans.

 

[fraurosena]

Sigh. Normally, I would say this might even be a good thing, because an insider like a former mine executive would know all about mining safety issues. But when it concerns this administration, you know something is fishy. And sure enough...

Senate Confirms Former Mine Executive To Be In Charge Of Mine Safety

Quote

The Republican-controlled Senate confirmed President Donald Trump’s pick to run the Mine Safety and Health Administration on Wednesday, even though the nominee once ran a coal company that repeatedly violated mine safety laws.

Senators voted 52-46 along party lines to make David Zatezalo the assistant secretary for mine safety and health, a top position at the Labor Department. Zatezalo will be in charge of enforcing the same regulations that were broken by Rhino Resources, the company where he served as chief executive.

No Republicans voted against his confirmation.

Zatezalo fits a long-running pattern with the Trump administration, of nominees being chosen to run agencies that they previously stood across from. During his confirmation hearing last month, Zatezalo acknowledged the safety failures from when he was at Rhino, saying he wasn’t “proud” of them and tried to deal with them at the time.

“I did not try to lawyer up and stop anything from happening,” he told senators. “You know, if you haven’t done your job, we should be big kids and deal with it as such.”

Zatezalo started his career as a rank-and-file miner but worked his way up to the top of the industry. When he was the chief executive of Rhino, one of the company’s mines was nearly placed on MSHA’s dreaded “pattern of violations” list after a series of safety lapses. The list is typically reserved for the industry’s worst offenders.

In 2011, Rhino was fined $44,500 after one of its mine foremen was killed in a wall collapse inside a West Virginia mine. Around the same time, MSHA accused one of Rhino’s mines in Kentucky of trying to hamper safety inspections by MSHA officials.

After years of relatively tough enforcement from the Obama administration, coal operators will now have someone from their own ranks in charge of doling out citations and fines. MSHA’s inspection and investigation work is done by career employees, not political appointees, but as MSHA’s chief, Zatezalo will ultimately decide how aggressive the agency is in cracking down on unsafe mines.

Mine safety advocates previously told HuffPost that they are skeptical of regulators plucked from the industry but plan to give Zatezalo the benefit of the doubt.

In a phone interview with HuffPost in September, Zatezalo said his close relationships with coal operators shouldn’t be a concern. “I don’t agree with that,” he said at the time. “People can say what they’re going to say. Actions speak louder than words.”

Mining deaths have been trending downward in recent years as the coal industry has shed jobs, but there’s been an uptick in fatalities this year. Twelve U.S. miners were killed on the job through August, compared with eight over the same period the previous year. There has also been a resurgence of black lung disease in several pockets of Appalachia.

Zatezalo said during his confirmation hearing that he was concerned with the number of black lung cases. He said he didn’t want to scale back regulations adopted in 2014 to decrease the amount of coal and silica dust in mines, which lead to black lung and the respiratory disease known as silicosis.

“I would not propose any reduction in the enforcement,” he said. “I would not see that diminish in any way.”

From an optimistic perspective, one might think 'it takes one to catch one'. I'd like to think that was the case here, but I'm very much afraid that it isn't.

[AmazonGrace]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5108873/Joe-Barton-apologizes-leaked-nude-photo.html

Texas Congressman Joe Barton apologizes for leaked nude photo and graphic texts circulating online but has no plans to resign over it

Joe Barton apologized for the nude photo and graphic texts on Wednesday

He said the photo was taken in recent years when separated from his wife

Republican said he had a series of sexual relationships prior the the divorce

The photo of Barton surfaced this week when a Twitter user posted it online

The user also posted a screenshot of a graphic text message Barton had sent that read: 'I want u soo bad. Right now.' 

 

--- 

He had to specify he has had sex with adults. 

That's where America is now. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Conservatives have a breathtaking plan for Trump to pack the courts"

Spoiler

Conservatives have a new court-packing plan, and in the spirit of the holiday, it’s a turducken of a scheme: a regulatory rollback hidden inside a civil rights reversal stuffed into a Trumpification of the courts. If conservatives get their way, President Trump will add twice as many lifetime members to the federal judiciary in the next 12 months (650) as Barack Obama named in eight years (325). American law will never be the same.

The “outer turkey” in the plan is the ongoing Trumpification of the courts. In the final two years of Obama’s presidency, Senate Republicans engaged in tenacious obstruction to leave as many judicial vacancies unfilled as possible. The Garland-to-Gorsuch Supreme Court switch is the most visible example of this tactic but far from the only one: Due to GOP obstruction, “the number of [judicial] vacancies . . . on the table when [Trump] was sworn in was unprecedented,” White House Counsel Donald McGahn recently boasted to the conservative Federalist Society.

Trump is wasting no time in filling the 103 judicial vacancies he inherited. In the first nine months of Obama’s tenure, he nominated 20 judges to the federal trial and appellate courts; in Trump’s first nine months, he named 58. Senate Republicans are racing these nominees through confirmation; last week, breaking a 100-year-old tradition, they eliminated the “blue slip” rule that allowed home-state senators to object to particularly problematic nominees. The rush to Trumpify the judiciary includes nominees rated unqualified by the American Bar Association, nominees with outrageously conservative views and nominees significantly younger (and, therefore, likely to serve longer) than those of previous presidents. As a result, by sometime next year, 1 in 8 cases filed in federal court will be heard by a judge picked by Trump. Many of these judges will likely still be serving in 2050.

But even this plan — to fill approximately 150 judicial vacancies before the 2018 elections — is not enough for conservatives.

Enter the next element of the court-packing turducken: a new plan written by the crafty co-founder of the Federalist Society, Steven Calabresi. In a paper that deserves credit for its transparency (it features a section titled “Undoing President Barack Obama’s Judicial Legacy”), Calabresi proposes to pack the federal courts with a “minimum” of 260 — and possibly as many as 447 — newly created judicial positions. Under this plan, the 228-year-old federal judiciary would increase — in a single year — by 30 to 50 percent.

Never mind that Republicans saw no urgency in filling judicial vacancies while Obama was president. Never mind that they ignored pleas from conservative Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to fill positions in courts facing “judicial emergencies.” Now, conservatives want a 30 to 50 percent increase in the number of federal judgeships. And they have a clear idea of who should fill this massive number of new posts: “President Trump and the Republican Senate will need to fill all of these new judgeships in 2018, before the next session of Congress.”

Almost overnight, the judicial branch would come to consist of almost equal parts judges picked by nine presidents combined — Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama — and judges picked by one: Donald J. Trump. The effect on our civil rights and liberties would be astounding. And a continuation of the pattern of Trump’s nominees to date — more white and more male than any president’s in nearly 30 years — would roll back decades of progress in judicial diversity.

But even that isn’t enough for the Turducken Court Packers. They have jammed one more “treat” inside this turkey.

Calabresi has also proposed that Congress abolish 158 administrative law judgeships in federal regulatory agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration, Federal Communications Commission, and Securities and Exchange Commission, and replace these impartial fact-finders with a new corps of 158 Trump-selected judges who — unlike current administrative law judges — would serve for life.

These new Trump administrative law judges would have vast power over environmental, health and safety, fair competition, communications, labor, financial and consumer regulation for decades. Unlike the existing administrative law judges, selected as nonpartisan members of the civil service, Calabresi’s replacement corps would all be picked in a single year, by a single man: Donald J. Trump.

And if this breathtaking transformation of our federal judicial system isn’t jarring enough, Calabresi has one final treat: a proposal that Congress do all of this in the tax-cut bill that Congress is trying to pass before it leaves for the holidays.

Progressives need to mount a more cohesive and effective plan to slow down the Trump train of judicial transformation. Otherwise, we’ll have a court-packing turducken for Thanksgiving, and a revolutionary rollback in rights and regulation for Christmas.

This is terrifying. America would be screwed for the next 50 years.

[Howl]

Quote

Republican voters unsurprisingly view their party’s tax agenda much more favorably than the broader electorate, approving of it by 60 to 15 percent, the survey found. That may be all Republican lawmakers care to consider as they stoke a sense of urgency behind notching a quick win on a tax package.

The bolded is it, in a nutshell.  The bill will pass.  But keep in mind that even though it is ostensibly supported by 60% of Republicans,  there are still some who think it is total crap and some percentage of the supporters will be totally screwed on health insurance.   

The 2018 mid term elections can't get here soon enough. 

[fraurosena]

Sen. Chris Coons is not mincing words here. Wanna bet it won't lead to an answer, regardless?

I do like how he's using Sessions own words against him though. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Could the battle for the GOP’s soul leave Republicans unelectable?"

Spoiler

"We are in trouble as a party if we continue to follow both Roy Moore and Donald Trump.”

That was Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) Monday, doubling down on something he said on a hot mic last weekend: That if the Republican Party becomes “the party of Roy Moore and Donald Trump, we are toast.”

What Flake said publicly is what Republican leaders are stressing over privately. They fear Trump is taking the party in a direction that could make it unelectable.

Of course, Trump would argue that he's taking the party in the right direction.

... < tweets from twitler >

What's not up for debate is that, for better or for worse, the ground the GOP rests upon is shifting underneath Republicans' feet, and the battle is on for which side will ultimately lay claim to it.

Here are five ways that battle is manifesting right now:

1. Primaries, primaries, primaries: Senate Republicans should have a lot of pickup opportunities in next year's midterm elections, when 10 Senate Democrats are up for reelection in states that Trump won in 2016.

But Republicans first have to get through competitive primaries in nearly every state, including for seats the GOP already holds. Fighting each other for seats was not in the establishment's game plan.

Some of these competitive primaries came into being by Trump's gravitational pull. In the swing-state of Nevada, endangered Sen. Dean Heller (R) has to beat a pro-Trump challenger before he can even think about reelection. Same in Arizona, which is one reason Flake stepped down. (More on that in a minute.)

... < chart >

2. The decline of establishment power: Senate Republican leaders want Moore to drop out of next month's special election in Alabama to fill the seat Attorney General Jeff Sessions vacated. Now. Better to lose a Senate seat than serve alongside someone accused of sexually assaulting teenage girls.

But Moore is still in it, with the president's blessing, no less.

This is just one high-profile example of the GOP establishment leadership's slipping power. For the past several years, campaigning against the power structure in Washington has been a winning argument, said Doug Heye, a GOP consultant.

A candidates' playbook looks something like: “Attack GOP leadership, raise money,” Heye said. That has cost the GOP establishment in reputation and leverage.

3. The rise of more controversial candidates: The establishment GOP leadership once thought it had a different insurgency, the tea party movement, under control. Until interim Sen. Luther Strange lost to Moore in Alabama this fall, the Republican establishment hadn't lost a primary in five years.

They lost Alabama, and they could lose more primaries next year, which could cost them general elections. Trump's former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, has said he wants to try to challenge nearly every GOP senator up for reelection in the 2018 midterms.

Thought there's no evidence Bannon can do that, there is a ton of evidence that when far-right candidates win primaries, they are prone to spectacular downfalls in the general elections.

Democrats won key Senate races in Missouri and Indiana in 2012 because Republican voters elected flawed candidates who said controversial things about rape. Now, there's a growing chance Democrats could pick up a Senate seat, in Alabama of all places, because Republicans there nominated Moore.

... < chart >

4. Swing groups are souring on the president: Trump's approval rating at this point in his presidency is lower than any president in the history of polling. And a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll finds majorities in crucial swing groups — white women with college degrees, moderates and independents — don't like him.

... < chart >

If these critical voters are so turned off by Trump, Republicans up for election next year may have to decide they need to be critical of the president, too, if they want to win.

We got a glimpse of these key demographics trend away from Republicans in Virginia's state elections earlier this month. In the hotly contested governor's race, exit polls showed women voted for the Democrat by a 22-point margin, five points more than they voted for Hillary Clinton a year earlier. Independents also voted for the Democrat for governor by a larger margin than they voted for Clinton.

... < chart >

5. Jeff Flake himself: Some Republicans up for reelection may have to ditch Trump to keep their jobs.

The opposite happened to Flake. He quit his job to ditch Trump.  “I will not be complicit,” Flake said in a shocking retirement announcement on the Senate floor last month.

But as Flake himself acknowledged, Arizona Republican voters seem to feel differently. Polls showed Flake would struggle to win a primary against his pro-Trump challenger, and Flake chose to retire rather than run for reelection in a losing effort.

“The path that I would have to travel to get the Republican nomination is a path I'm not willing to take, and that I can't in good conscience take,” he told the Arizona Republic.

The end of Flake's own career is a microcosm of the Republican Party's breakup: Republicans are in a battle for the soul of their party. And it's not clear (yet) which side will ultimately claim it.

But as Flake voiced this week, plenty of establishment Republicans are terrified that Trump could be winning.

I have one quibble -- in the next-to-last paragraph, mention is made of the "soul" of the Rep party. The author is wrong -- that group of jackals has no soul.

[fraurosena]

6 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Could the battle for the GOP’s soul leave Republicans unelectable?"

  Hide contents

"We are in trouble as a party if we continue to follow both Roy Moore and Donald Trump.”

That was Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) Monday, doubling down on something he said on a hot mic last weekend: That if the Republican Party becomes “the party of Roy Moore and Donald Trump, we are toast.”

What Flake said publicly is what Republican leaders are stressing over privately. They fear Trump is taking the party in a direction that could make it unelectable.

Of course, Trump would argue that he's taking the party in the right direction.

... < tweets from twitler >

What's not up for debate is that, for better or for worse, the ground the GOP rests upon is shifting underneath Republicans' feet, and the battle is on for which side will ultimately lay claim to it.

Here are five ways that battle is manifesting right now:

1. Primaries, primaries, primaries: Senate Republicans should have a lot of pickup opportunities in next year's midterm elections, when 10 Senate Democrats are up for reelection in states that Trump won in 2016.

But Republicans first have to get through competitive primaries in nearly every state, including for seats the GOP already holds. Fighting each other for seats was not in the establishment's game plan.

Some of these competitive primaries came into being by Trump's gravitational pull. In the swing-state of Nevada, endangered Sen. Dean Heller (R) has to beat a pro-Trump challenger before he can even think about reelection. Same in Arizona, which is one reason Flake stepped down. (More on that in a minute.)

... < chart >

2. The decline of establishment power: Senate Republican leaders want Moore to drop out of next month's special election in Alabama to fill the seat Attorney General Jeff Sessions vacated. Now. Better to lose a Senate seat than serve alongside someone accused of sexually assaulting teenage girls.

But Moore is still in it, with the president's blessing, no less.

This is just one high-profile example of the GOP establishment leadership's slipping power. For the past several years, campaigning against the power structure in Washington has been a winning argument, said Doug Heye, a GOP consultant.

A candidates' playbook looks something like: “Attack GOP leadership, raise money,” Heye said. That has cost the GOP establishment in reputation and leverage.

3. The rise of more controversial candidates: The establishment GOP leadership once thought it had a different insurgency, the tea party movement, under control. Until interim Sen. Luther Strange lost to Moore in Alabama this fall, the Republican establishment hadn't lost a primary in five years.

They lost Alabama, and they could lose more primaries next year, which could cost them general elections. Trump's former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, has said he wants to try to challenge nearly every GOP senator up for reelection in the 2018 midterms.

Thought there's no evidence Bannon can do that, there is a ton of evidence that when far-right candidates win primaries, they are prone to spectacular downfalls in the general elections.

Democrats won key Senate races in Missouri and Indiana in 2012 because Republican voters elected flawed candidates who said controversial things about rape. Now, there's a growing chance Democrats could pick up a Senate seat, in Alabama of all places, because Republicans there nominated Moore.

... < chart >

4. Swing groups are souring on the president: Trump's approval rating at this point in his presidency is lower than any president in the history of polling. And a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll finds majorities in crucial swing groups — white women with college degrees, moderates and independents — don't like him.

... < chart >

If these critical voters are so turned off by Trump, Republicans up for election next year may have to decide they need to be critical of the president, too, if they want to win.

We got a glimpse of these key demographics trend away from Republicans in Virginia's state elections earlier this month. In the hotly contested governor's race, exit polls showed women voted for the Democrat by a 22-point margin, five points more than they voted for Hillary Clinton a year earlier. Independents also voted for the Democrat for governor by a larger margin than they voted for Clinton.

... < chart >

5. Jeff Flake himself: Some Republicans up for reelection may have to ditch Trump to keep their jobs.

The opposite happened to Flake. He quit his job to ditch Trump.  “I will not be complicit,” Flake said in a shocking retirement announcement on the Senate floor last month.

But as Flake himself acknowledged, Arizona Republican voters seem to feel differently. Polls showed Flake would struggle to win a primary against his pro-Trump challenger, and Flake chose to retire rather than run for reelection in a losing effort.

“The path that I would have to travel to get the Republican nomination is a path I'm not willing to take, and that I can't in good conscience take,” he told the Arizona Republic.

The end of Flake's own career is a microcosm of the Republican Party's breakup: Republicans are in a battle for the soul of their party. And it's not clear (yet) which side will ultimately claim it.

But as Flake voiced this week, plenty of establishment Republicans are terrified that Trump could be winning.

I have one quibble -- in the next-to-last paragraph, mention is made of the "soul" of the Rep party. The author is wrong -- that group of jackals has no soul.

Now @GreyhoundFan, I agree with most of your post, but I have one quibble— what have jackals ever done to deserve to be so unfairly compared to that group of soulless cretins?

[GrumpyGran]

23 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Sen. Chris Coons is not mincing words here. Wanna bet it won't lead to an answer, regardless?

It would have been better if he'd managed to put a line in there like this: "While I realize you might have trouble recalling my previous requests, they were in writing so I'm sure they're lying around your office somewhere. If you can recall where that is."

21 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Could the battle for the GOP’s soul leave Republicans unelectable?"

  Reveal hidden contents

"We are in trouble as a party if we continue to follow both Roy Moore and Donald Trump.”

That was Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) Monday, doubling down on something he said on a hot mic last weekend: That if the Republican Party becomes “the party of Roy Moore and Donald Trump, we are toast.”

What Flake said publicly is what Republican leaders are stressing over privately. They fear Trump is taking the party in a direction that could make it unelectable.

Of course, Trump would argue that he's taking the party in the right direction.

... < tweets from twitler >

What's not up for debate is that, for better or for worse, the ground the GOP rests upon is shifting underneath Republicans' feet, and the battle is on for which side will ultimately lay claim to it.

Here are five ways that battle is manifesting right now:

1. Primaries, primaries, primaries: Senate Republicans should have a lot of pickup opportunities in next year's midterm elections, when 10 Senate Democrats are up for reelection in states that Trump won in 2016.

But Republicans first have to get through competitive primaries in nearly every state, including for seats the GOP already holds. Fighting each other for seats was not in the establishment's game plan.

Some of these competitive primaries came into being by Trump's gravitational pull. In the swing-state of Nevada, endangered Sen. Dean Heller (R) has to beat a pro-Trump challenger before he can even think about reelection. Same in Arizona, which is one reason Flake stepped down. (More on that in a minute.)

... < chart >

2. The decline of establishment power: Senate Republican leaders want Moore to drop out of next month's special election in Alabama to fill the seat Attorney General Jeff Sessions vacated. Now. Better to lose a Senate seat than serve alongside someone accused of sexually assaulting teenage girls.

But Moore is still in it, with the president's blessing, no less.

This is just one high-profile example of the GOP establishment leadership's slipping power. For the past several years, campaigning against the power structure in Washington has been a winning argument, said Doug Heye, a GOP consultant.

A candidates' playbook looks something like: “Attack GOP leadership, raise money,” Heye said. That has cost the GOP establishment in reputation and leverage.

3. The rise of more controversial candidates: The establishment GOP leadership once thought it had a different insurgency, the tea party movement, under control. Until interim Sen. Luther Strange lost to Moore in Alabama this fall, the Republican establishment hadn't lost a primary in five years.

They lost Alabama, and they could lose more primaries next year, which could cost them general elections. Trump's former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, has said he wants to try to challenge nearly every GOP senator up for reelection in the 2018 midterms.

Thought there's no evidence Bannon can do that, there is a ton of evidence that when far-right candidates win primaries, they are prone to spectacular downfalls in the general elections.

Democrats won key Senate races in Missouri and Indiana in 2012 because Republican voters elected flawed candidates who said controversial things about rape. Now, there's a growing chance Democrats could pick up a Senate seat, in Alabama of all places, because Republicans there nominated Moore.

... < chart >

4. Swing groups are souring on the president: Trump's approval rating at this point in his presidency is lower than any president in the history of polling. And a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll finds majorities in crucial swing groups — white women with college degrees, moderates and independents — don't like him.

... < chart >

If these critical voters are so turned off by Trump, Republicans up for election next year may have to decide they need to be critical of the president, too, if they want to win.

We got a glimpse of these key demographics trend away from Republicans in Virginia's state elections earlier this month. In the hotly contested governor's race, exit polls showed women voted for the Democrat by a 22-point margin, five points more than they voted for Hillary Clinton a year earlier. Independents also voted for the Democrat for governor by a larger margin than they voted for Clinton.

... < chart >

5. Jeff Flake himself: Some Republicans up for reelection may have to ditch Trump to keep their jobs.

The opposite happened to Flake. He quit his job to ditch Trump.  “I will not be complicit,” Flake said in a shocking retirement announcement on the Senate floor last month.

But as Flake himself acknowledged, Arizona Republican voters seem to feel differently. Polls showed Flake would struggle to win a primary against his pro-Trump challenger, and Flake chose to retire rather than run for reelection in a losing effort.

“The path that I would have to travel to get the Republican nomination is a path I'm not willing to take, and that I can't in good conscience take,” he told the Arizona Republic.

The end of Flake's own career is a microcosm of the Republican Party's breakup: Republicans are in a battle for the soul of their party. And it's not clear (yet) which side will ultimately claim it.

But as Flake voiced this week, plenty of establishment Republicans are terrified that Trump could be winning.

I have one quibble -- in the next-to-last paragraph, mention is made of the "soul" of the Rep party. The author is wrong -- that group of jackals has no soul.

More fodder for a third party. If one doesn't emerge before 2020, I'll be very surprised. And they have $oul$, don't you know? It's the new religion. The 21st century version of Scientology.

[Howl]

I guess this is the right place to put this, and note that more and more right-wing agenda items are being attached/buried in the tax bill.  Here's one example where fetal person-hood language is buried in, yes, a section related to college savings plans.  

Republicans’ tax bill is sneakily hacking away at abortion rights: It’s hidden in the section about college savings plans.

Spoiler

 

Buried in Republicans’ tax bill, in a provision about college savings accounts, is a pro-life political statement — one that doesn’t make much change to the tax law, and instead helps the right build a case against abortion.

On page 93 of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Republicans write that “nothing shall prevent an unborn child from being treated as a designated beneficiary” of a tax-advantaged college savings accounts, known as 529 plans, which allows parents to set aside money for expenses like tuition or education materials.

“The term ‘child in utero’ means a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb,” the bill states.

To those familiar with 529 plans, it’s easy to see that this amendment is functionally useless. Current tax law allows both parents and future parents to set up 529 accounts, whether or not they are expecting a child.

Setting up a 529 plan simply requires a Social Security number, and people are entitled to set up the account in their own name, and then once they have a child they can change the beneficiary of the account to the child.

So if this doesn’t actually change how future parents save for college expenses, why is it in there at all? Abortion rights advocacy groups have flagged the provision as a likely anti-abortion political statement, and one that could help Republicans build a case toward redefining how the law defines a person — a crucial part of the abortion debate in the United States.

“It’s just another way to sneak into law conferring status on the unborn that could build this case” that a fetus should have the same rights as a child, Bonnie Stabile, a policy ethics expert with George Mason University, said.

Click on the link in the title for the full text of the article. 

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"GOP’s new scheme to save Trump’s tax plan reveals the scam at its core"

Spoiler

Amid the final push to pass the Senate tax plan, which is at a make-or-break moment today, Republicans have now hatched two separate schemes, each designed to win over a different bloc of undecided senators. But the two maneuvers could contradict each other — and the contradiction would neatly reveal the big scam at the heart of this whole enterprise.

Several deficit-hawk senators, such as Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), are demanding that some kind of “trigger” be added to the bill, which would raise taxes later if the plan’s tax cuts end up adding to the deficit. The bill would boost the deficit by $1.4 trillion in the short term. Some Republicans have argued that the spectacular growth unleashed by the plan would offset that, but Corker and company (and many economists) are skeptical; hence the demand for a tax-hike trigger. As of now, how this trigger would work, and whose taxes would go up, are unspecified.

At the same time, Senate Republicans are currently looking at ways to make the bill more generous to owners of “pass-through” businesses, to win over holdouts Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Steve Daines of Montana. Research has shown that most pass-through income goes to the top 1 percent: As the New York Times put it, to win them over, Republicans are “increasingly tilting” their plan “to benefit wealthy Americans.”

But here’s the rub of the matter: As one tax analyst tells me, if Republicans make the plan more generous to the wealthy by doing more for pass-throughs (to win over some senators), this would also add to the deficit (which should drive away the others). And this leads us right back to the con at the heart of this whole affair.

The center of the Senate GOP tax plan is a large permanent cut to the tax rate paid by corporations. These would themselves overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, because the vast majority of their benefits would go to shareholders and capital. But Republicans face two challenges. The first is to sell this primarily as a middle-class tax cut, so voters accept it. They do this by front-loading a bunch of preferences for the middle class along with cuts to individual rates across the board. The second challenge is to do this while simultaneously making the case that the plan would not balloon the deficit, to hold on to deficit-hawk senators and because if it raises the deficit in the long term, procedurally it can’t pass by simple majority with only Republican votes. Republicans address this problem by ending all the middle-class preferences and individual rate cuts after 2025.

But the problem is that the second imperative undermines the first. Because the middle-class benefits must be temporary to avoid busting the long-term deficit, analyses have found that in the long run, it would shower enormous long-term benefits on the rich while the benefits to the middle class fade away and taxes go up later for many less-fortunate earners. The whole point of back-loading the losses on to that latter group later is to prevent the permanent corporate tax cuts from ballooning the long-term deficit, allowing a huge permanent tax cut overwhelmingly benefiting the rich to pass with no Democrats.

The two new maneuvers Republicans are now contemplating both typify and exacerbate this core problem. Senators who want the plan to be more generous to pass-throughs say they want the small businesses in their ranks (there are some) to get equivalent treatment to wealthy corporations. But Joseph Rosenberg, a senior research associate at the Tax Policy Center, tells me that this itself would add to the deficit.

“Changes that would make the pass-through provision more generous would further increase the cost of the bill and the deficit,” Rosenberg emailed me. What’s more, Rosenberg notes that such a change would likely be something the wealthy in particular can take advantage of, because they’d be more inclined and able to reclassify their income as pass-through. As “taxpayers look for opportunities to take advantage of the tax benefit,” Rosenberg says, this would “disproportionately benefit higher-income households.”

For all of this to go through, consider the most likely way it would happen: The deficit hawks would have to accept a plan that on paper does balloon the deficit in the short term, on the basis of triggers that allow them to claim tax hikes will kick in if growth doesn’t offset that. (Either these triggers remain unspecified, or Republicans will be declaring that some specific groups may be hit with tax hikes later.) Meanwhile, to make conservatives happy, the plan would have to include still more benefits for the rich under the guise of mainly helping small businesses.

All that could very well happen. But if so, it will just underscore how many different ruses are necessary to paper over the basic con at the center of it all: Republicans are giving the wealthy a large permanent tax cut while selling it as mainly a large middle-class tax cut and as something that won’t bust the deficit.

Update: Reporter Steven Dennis points out that Johnson and Daines are proposing to pay for their idea of making the bill more generous to pass-throughs by doing away with some deductions enjoyed by corporations.

But Seth Hanlon, a tax analyst with the Center for American Progress, tells me that we should not presume this offset will prove to be real until we actually see it in the bill and it’s subjected to serious scrutiny. If not, Republicans would have to find the money to pay for this elsewhere, or it would increase the deficit.

Beyond this, the broader point still holds: The underlying problem here has always been that Republicans are trying to push a permanent tax cut that would overwhelmingly benefit the rich, while selling it as primarily a middle-class tax cut and claiming it won’t bust the deficit.

...

Repugs = scammers.

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

But if so, it will just underscore how many different ruses are necessary to paper over the basic con at the center of it all: Republicans are giving the wealthy a large permanent tax cut while selling it as mainly a large middle-class tax cut and as something that won’t bust the deficit.

I wonder if this isn't becoming more obvious to some voters who sit on the fence or have voted Republican traditionally. Not the BTs, they are a lost cause but they only represent, at this point maybe 35% of the country. Others who are normally conservatives have to be wondering , with a majority in Congress and the Oval, why this is still a battle ground. The implication is that there is some bad stuff in this bill.

The Repubs must know that, even with the manipulation at the voter booths and all their other attempts to insure a victory next November, they may be in danger. They may have to find a scapegoat for the damage to the poor and middle class once this passes, if it does. Who could that be? Mueller may be playing into their hand.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Sigh. The Repug-controlled budget committee passed the horrible tax plan to go to the full senate: "Senate Republican tax plan clears hurdle with help from two key GOP holdouts"

Spoiler

The Republican push to rewrite the tax code gained momentum Tuesday after a Senate panel advanced the measure and several wavering lawmakers signaled that they are leaning toward backing the bill.

Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee unanimously voted to send the party’s tax package to the Senate floor, setting up a final vote as soon as this week. The measure moved forward when two GOP senators on the committee who had threatened opposition, Sens. Bob Corker (Tenn.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.), instead supported the legislation.

Corker said he had reached an agreement with GOP leaders that would limit the tax plan’s impact on the debt. Johnson, who has repeatedly threatened to vote against the bill because he says it favors corporations over other businesses, said he continued to have concerns but voted to “make sure this process moves forward.”

While the bill now heads to the Senate floor, it remains unclear if Republicans have the 50 votes they need for final approval. GOP leaders still have to corral several on-the-fence members of their caucus, who have different and contradictory demands.

But getting the legislation to the floor represents a significant victory for President Trump and Republican leaders, who are trying to deliver a major legislative accomplishment after a year full of misfires.

Trump on Tuesday visited Republicans at the Capitol to cajole skeptical lawmakers. During his visit, he clashed with Johnson over the senator’s demands but appeared to make substantial progress toward winning another key vote, from Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).

In a private meeting with Collins before lunch, and again in front of the larger group of Republicans, Trump signaled openness to Collins’s demands, which include paying federal subsidies to help lower-income Americans afford health coverage and allowing Americans to continue deducting up to $10,000 in property taxes from their taxable income.

“It’s certainly progress,” said Collins, who played a central role in derailing GOP health-care bills this year.

McConnell said Tuesday that he intends to press forward with the bill in the coming days, eyeing passage by the week’s end.

“It’s going to have lots of adjustments before it ends, but the end result will be a very, very massive — the largest in the history of our country — tax cut,” Trump said.

Beyond bolstering support for the bill, Republicans must also fit the sweeping tax cut — most of it aimed at businesses — into a tight fiscal straitjacket because of their decision to use special budget procedures to avoid a Democratic filibuster.

That means the changes sought by Collins, Johnson and others would require finding offsetting revenue elsewhere in the bill. And that could create problems for other Republicans.

The House has already passed its version of the tax plan, and the Senate bill is certain to be considerably different. Republicans in the two chambers would have to reach an agreement on a consensus bill.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) said Tuesday that he expected a formal conference committee to be appointed to hash out the differences, even as more Republicans speculated that the House would simply pass the Senate bill.

“We’re looking forward to finding common ground in conference, finalizing the details and sending this historic legislation to the president by the end of the year,” Brady said in remarks to the American Enterprise Institute.

The Senate tax bill would permanently slash the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent starting in 2019 and temporarily lower the tax rates paid by individuals and families through 2025. It would also repeal a provision of the Affordable Care Act that sets up penalties if Americans don’t have health insurance, a central plank of the Obama administration’s signature health-care law.

The health-care provisions in the bill prompted Collins to seek legislation stabilizing insurance markets, including a bipartisan bill sponsored by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) that would make federal payments to insurers, as well as a bill Collins co-sponsored with Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) that would provide new reinsurance payments to subsidize high-cost patients.

Those bills, however, cannot be added directly to the tax bill because of fiscal and procedural constraints. Collins said she wants to see the health legislation pass into law before the differences between the House and Senate tax bills are resolved.

Meanwhile, few details have emerged about the deal Corker secured to blunt the tax bill’s deficit impact. He had sought the inclusion of a fiscal “trigger” that would generate additional revenue if the bill failed to spark the economic growth that Republicans have predicted.

Some Republicans aired concerns that any such trigger could cause a tax increase amid an economic downturn or complicate companies’ ability to do long-term planning and investment. Corker would not discuss details of the proposal Tuesday but assured reporters that his colleagues would find it palatable.

“There’s agreement in principle, very strong agreement, with McConnell, with the Finance Committee — and of course the White House has been in the midst of all this, too — but the agreement was made with McConnell and the Finance Committee leadership,” Corker said Tuesday.

No official analysis has been released by the Treasury Department or the nonpartisan congressional Joint Committee on Taxation to support the GOP claims that growth would make up for revenue losses. In a Tuesday memo, the committee told Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) that it might have a rough analysis available by late Wednesday — though that report would not include the latest changes to the Senate legislation.

Wyden, the top Democrat on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, called the inclusion of a trigger “another budget gimmick” that would obscure the true cost of the GOP bill.

“What they have done for months is resisted efforts to give us anything resembling legitimate scoring,” he said.

Johnson’s opposition is based on his complaints that the bill would not sufficiently lower taxes for millions of businesses that are effectively taxed through the individual income tax code. These businesses, known as “pass throughs,” would receive temporary tax cuts that expire in 2025, unlike the tax cuts for corporations, which would be made permanent.

Republicans control 52 votes in the 100-seat Senate, and they can afford to lose the support of just two members if they want the measure to pass.

Trump and White House officials have made entreaties to some Democratic senators representing states that voted for Trump last year, but they have yet to persuade any to support the bill.

Various estimates show that the tax plan would disproportionately benefit corporations and the wealthy, with many middle-class Americans seeing their taxes increase over time. Republicans have said they would not allow the middle class to see a tax increase and would change the bill if needed, but it has left an opening for Democrats to attack the package.

“This legislation is a disastrous and unfair piece of legislation that gives huge tax breaks to the people who need it the least — the very, very wealthy,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Budget Committee Democrats unanimously voted against advancing the tax bill Tuesday, and protesters disrupted the panel’s meeting shortly before the vote, chanting “Kill the bill.” But the measure proceeded after the protesters were cleared, and Democrats were unable to slow it down or change its design.

Describing the committee vote at the White House on Tuesday, Trump touted his party’s success. “We had a unanimous vote — from the Republican side, at least.”

Several protesters were arrested at the committee meeting. They kept shouting, trying to drown out the Repug "yea" votes.

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Sigh. The Repug-controlled budget committee passed the horrible tax plan to go to the full senate: "Senate Republican tax plan clears hurdle with help from two key GOP holdouts"

  Reveal hidden contents

The Republican push to rewrite the tax code gained momentum Tuesday after a Senate panel advanced the measure and several wavering lawmakers signaled that they are leaning toward backing the bill.

Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee unanimously voted to send the party’s tax package to the Senate floor, setting up a final vote as soon as this week. The measure moved forward when two GOP senators on the committee who had threatened opposition, Sens. Bob Corker (Tenn.) and Ron Johnson (Wis.), instead supported the legislation.

Corker said he had reached an agreement with GOP leaders that would limit the tax plan’s impact on the debt. Johnson, who has repeatedly threatened to vote against the bill because he says it favors corporations over other businesses, said he continued to have concerns but voted to “make sure this process moves forward.”

While the bill now heads to the Senate floor, it remains unclear if Republicans have the 50 votes they need for final approval. GOP leaders still have to corral several on-the-fence members of their caucus, who have different and contradictory demands.

But getting the legislation to the floor represents a significant victory for President Trump and Republican leaders, who are trying to deliver a major legislative accomplishment after a year full of misfires.

Trump on Tuesday visited Republicans at the Capitol to cajole skeptical lawmakers. During his visit, he clashed with Johnson over the senator’s demands but appeared to make substantial progress toward winning another key vote, from Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).

In a private meeting with Collins before lunch, and again in front of the larger group of Republicans, Trump signaled openness to Collins’s demands, which include paying federal subsidies to help lower-income Americans afford health coverage and allowing Americans to continue deducting up to $10,000 in property taxes from their taxable income.

“It’s certainly progress,” said Collins, who played a central role in derailing GOP health-care bills this year.

McConnell said Tuesday that he intends to press forward with the bill in the coming days, eyeing passage by the week’s end.

“It’s going to have lots of adjustments before it ends, but the end result will be a very, very massive — the largest in the history of our country — tax cut,” Trump said.

Beyond bolstering support for the bill, Republicans must also fit the sweeping tax cut — most of it aimed at businesses — into a tight fiscal straitjacket because of their decision to use special budget procedures to avoid a Democratic filibuster.

That means the changes sought by Collins, Johnson and others would require finding offsetting revenue elsewhere in the bill. And that could create problems for other Republicans.

The House has already passed its version of the tax plan, and the Senate bill is certain to be considerably different. Republicans in the two chambers would have to reach an agreement on a consensus bill.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) said Tuesday that he expected a formal conference committee to be appointed to hash out the differences, even as more Republicans speculated that the House would simply pass the Senate bill.

“We’re looking forward to finding common ground in conference, finalizing the details and sending this historic legislation to the president by the end of the year,” Brady said in remarks to the American Enterprise Institute.

The Senate tax bill would permanently slash the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent starting in 2019 and temporarily lower the tax rates paid by individuals and families through 2025. It would also repeal a provision of the Affordable Care Act that sets up penalties if Americans don’t have health insurance, a central plank of the Obama administration’s signature health-care law.

The health-care provisions in the bill prompted Collins to seek legislation stabilizing insurance markets, including a bipartisan bill sponsored by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) that would make federal payments to insurers, as well as a bill Collins co-sponsored with Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) that would provide new reinsurance payments to subsidize high-cost patients.

Those bills, however, cannot be added directly to the tax bill because of fiscal and procedural constraints. Collins said she wants to see the health legislation pass into law before the differences between the House and Senate tax bills are resolved.

Meanwhile, few details have emerged about the deal Corker secured to blunt the tax bill’s deficit impact. He had sought the inclusion of a fiscal “trigger” that would generate additional revenue if the bill failed to spark the economic growth that Republicans have predicted.

Some Republicans aired concerns that any such trigger could cause a tax increase amid an economic downturn or complicate companies’ ability to do long-term planning and investment. Corker would not discuss details of the proposal Tuesday but assured reporters that his colleagues would find it palatable.

“There’s agreement in principle, very strong agreement, with McConnell, with the Finance Committee — and of course the White House has been in the midst of all this, too — but the agreement was made with McConnell and the Finance Committee leadership,” Corker said Tuesday.

No official analysis has been released by the Treasury Department or the nonpartisan congressional Joint Committee on Taxation to support the GOP claims that growth would make up for revenue losses. In a Tuesday memo, the committee told Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) that it might have a rough analysis available by late Wednesday — though that report would not include the latest changes to the Senate legislation.

Wyden, the top Democrat on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, called the inclusion of a trigger “another budget gimmick” that would obscure the true cost of the GOP bill.

“What they have done for months is resisted efforts to give us anything resembling legitimate scoring,” he said.

Johnson’s opposition is based on his complaints that the bill would not sufficiently lower taxes for millions of businesses that are effectively taxed through the individual income tax code. These businesses, known as “pass throughs,” would receive temporary tax cuts that expire in 2025, unlike the tax cuts for corporations, which would be made permanent.

Republicans control 52 votes in the 100-seat Senate, and they can afford to lose the support of just two members if they want the measure to pass.

Trump and White House officials have made entreaties to some Democratic senators representing states that voted for Trump last year, but they have yet to persuade any to support the bill.

Various estimates show that the tax plan would disproportionately benefit corporations and the wealthy, with many middle-class Americans seeing their taxes increase over time. Republicans have said they would not allow the middle class to see a tax increase and would change the bill if needed, but it has left an opening for Democrats to attack the package.

“This legislation is a disastrous and unfair piece of legislation that gives huge tax breaks to the people who need it the least — the very, very wealthy,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Budget Committee Democrats unanimously voted against advancing the tax bill Tuesday, and protesters disrupted the panel’s meeting shortly before the vote, chanting “Kill the bill.” But the measure proceeded after the protesters were cleared, and Democrats were unable to slow it down or change its design.

Describing the committee vote at the White House on Tuesday, Trump touted his party’s success. “We had a unanimous vote — from the Republican side, at least.”

Several protesters were arrested at the committee meeting. They kept shouting, trying to drown out the Repug "yea" votes.

I'm afraid of what might be in this bill by now. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Why are Republicans raising taxes on millions of Americans?"

Spoiler

President Trump has promised to “give the American people a huge tax cut for Christmas — hopefully that will be a great, big, beautiful Christmas present.” Unfortunately for millions of Americans, what they will be getting instead is a lump of coal in the form of a tax increase — courtesy of the GOP.

When George W. Bush campaigned for his 2001 tax cuts, he was able to truthfully say that “everybody who pays taxes is going to get tax relief.” Republicans can’t say that today, because it isn’t true.

According to Congress’s nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), almost 1 in 10 Americans would see their tax bills go up under the Senate version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The Tax Policy Center comes to a similar conclusion. In 2019, about 9 percent of all taxpayers would see an average tax increase of about $2,700, including about 11 percent of middle-income taxpayers, who would see their tax bills rise by nearly $1,000. In 2025, 12 percent of taxpayers would see an average increase of $2,750, with 14 percent of middle-income taxpayers seeing their tax bills rise by $1,170. In all, just 76 percent of Americans would see their taxes go down under the Senate bill, while a quarter of all taxpayers would either see no benefit or see their tax bills go up — in many cases substantially.

This should never happen under unified Republican government. There are four words that no American should ever be able to utter: “Republicans raised my taxes.” To be clear, Democrats err when they claim that half the country will see a tax increase when the individual tax cuts expire in 2025 under the Senate bill, because everyone knows that they won’t all be allowed to expire — just like the Bush tax cuts were not allowed to expire under President Barack Obama except for those at the very top. But there are millions of Americans, including individuals and families at every income level, who would see their taxes hiked under the GOP plan.

At the American Enterprise Institute on Tuesday, I asked House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) about this. “I dispute those analyses,” he said, because they “describe an America that doesn’t exist, an America where the economy never grows, and paychecks never increase.” He pointed to a recent analysis in the Wall Street Journal by conservative economists who say tax reform would boost GDP by 3 to 4 percent long term, and said that as a result, “You’re going to see increases in paychecks. That matters for families as well. So, there’s more than just the rates in this tax reform.” In other words, even those who see their tax bills go up will be better off under the GOP plan.

That is a hard sell to voters. A new poll shows that while 73 percent of Americans believe in principle that Congress should cut taxes on individuals and small businesses and simplify the tax code, a 54 percent majority oppose the current Republican tax reform plans working their way through Capitol Hill. Why? Because 54 percent of Americans believe Republicans are going to raise their taxes. Many are wrong, but some are not. This should not even be a question in voters’ minds.

Americans see Republicans spending $1.5 trillion to fund a massive corporate tax rate reduction from 35 to 20 percent. The multinationals are taken care of, as is the donor class. The middle class? Not so much. They are losing many of their cherished tax deductions in exchange for a doubling of the standard deduction, an increase in the child tax credit and a tiny reduction in their tax rates. They are left on their own to figure out whether they are winners or losers under the GOP plan.

When Republicans reform the tax code, there should be no losers, especially not the middle class. For years, Republicans have been telling Americans: It’s not the government’s money, it’s your money, and we want to let you keep more of it to spend, save or invest as you see fit. If they raise taxes on millions, congressional Republicans will be violating that fundamental principle.

Fortunately, Brady says the bill could still change. “At every step we’ve worked to improve this,” he told me. “I would say, at the end of the day, wait till the final bill.” There are lots of middle-class taxpayers — and Republican voters — who hope he’s right.

It's amazing that 'trickle down' has come back. Actually, I guess the Repug tax plan will trickle down on most of us. We'll be turning yellow and brown from what they are trickling down on us.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Republican senator suggests Trump is strong-arming judicial nominees through Congress"

Spoiler

A Republican senator on Wednesday appeared to corroborate Democrats’ complaints that the Trump administration has been trying to strong-arm its judicial picks through Congress instead of consulting with lawmakers to find mutually agreeable candidates.

Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) told his colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee that White House Counsel Don McGahn had been “very firm . . . to the point that he was on the scarce side, in one conversation, of being polite,” in informing him that the administration’s nominee to fill a vacant seat on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 5th District was attorney Kyle Duncan — someone he had never met.

“Full credit: [McGahn] came back later and apologized,” Kennedy said. “But his firmness he did not relent on.”

Kennedy made his comments at a confirmation hearing for Duncan and 8th Circuit Court of Appeals nominee David Stras, whose candidacies have become a test for whether the GOP will prioritize the president’s judicial picks over achieving congressional consensus.

Traditionally, federal judge nominations do not receive congressional consideration unless the senators from affected states agree to consider the candidate. But neither Duncan nor Stras received every senator’s assent before committee chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) scheduled their confirmation hearing.

Democrats have accused Grassley of applying a different standard for President Trump’s circuit court nominees than he did for those of former president Barack Obama, to help Trump load up federal bench vacancies with picks some members find objectionable.

The Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), said Wednesday that Grassley had always waited for senators from affected states to agree to a nominee’s candidacy before scheduling confirmation hearing when Obama was president. She accused Grassley of blindsiding Democrats with Wednesday’s hearing and ignoring their requests to reconsider.

“The only difference is who sits in the White House,” Feinstein said.

Republican leaders warned earlier this year that they might curtail the practice of waiting for all affected senators to sign off on “blue slips” before scheduling a confirmation hearing for circuit court nominees. They argued that when multiple states are affected, one senator should not be able to hold up a process for political reasons. Grassley stressed on Wednesday that the vast majority of Judiciary Committee chairmen have made exceptions to the blue slip rule and that he felt senators had been given ample time to resolve their complaints about nominees with the White House.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who says he was only informed, not consulted, about Stras’s nomination, accused the White House of regularly ignoring the time-honored practice of joining “with home state senators to identify nominees” and find “consensus candidates.”

Franken charged that the White House had “outsourced the job of identifying potential Supreme Court nominees” to the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society, two conservative organizations, instead of turning to lawmakers for their recommendations.

“I do not think that the Senate should cede its power to the executive branch,” Franken said.

Kennedy refused to comment when asked after the meeting whether he thought the Trump administration was routinely ignoring senators’ input when it came to judicial nominations. He noted to Duncan on Wednesday that he was surprised the nominee had indicated on his preliminary questionnaire that Kennedy supported his nomination when they were unacquainted, and challenged him to prove that he was “the second coming of Justice Holmes or Justice Scalia, and not the second cousin of somebody who is politically connected in the Washington swamp.”

Duncan made a point of apologizing to Kennedy for being iced out of the selection process.

“It sounds from your opening comments that you were disrespected in this process, and I deeply regret that,” Duncan told Kennedy on Wednesday. Kennedy appeared to be pleased by the gesture.

Another case where I am angry, but not surprised.

[candygirl200413]

Welp now John McCain is game for the bill. I'm at the point where I've accepted it's going through regardless.