United States Congress of Fail (Part 3)

[GreyhoundFan]

From Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles: "A moment of truth for our country’s financial future"

Spoiler

Alan Simpson is a former Republican senator from Wyoming. Erskine Bowles served as chief of staff to President Bill Clinton from 1997 to 1998. They co-chaired the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

...

Seven years and almost $7 trillion in new debt ago, we released a bipartisan package of tax and spending reforms as co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. At the time, we declared that the era of deficit denial was over. Sadly, the debate on tax reform in the House and Senate suggests deficit denial is not only back but also stronger than ever. Yet the fundamental fiscal challenges we identified in 2010 remain.

We said then and believe now that Congress and the president should come together on a balanced plan that reduces deficits and promotes growth. We called for fundamental tax reform that would cut tax breaks to reduce tax rates and — rather than add to the debt — generate new revenue.

We called for a more internationally competitive corporate tax code but also pressed for continued investment in education, infrastructure and high-value-added research so that the United States can compete effectively in the knowledge-based global economy. We also said tax reform should raise $1 trillion in revenue for debt reduction and be paired with spending cuts and reforms of entitlement programs to bring spending growth under control.

Unfortunately, the tax plan under discussion in Congress ignores nearly all the hard choices we proposed — incorporating only the “goodies.” It reads as if it were developed for a country whose debt problems have been solved, when in reality debt is the highest it has ever been other than around World War II.

When this tax reform discussion started, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called for revenue-neutral tax reform. While ultimately more revenue is needed, deficit neutrality is likely the best that can be expected in the current political environment.

Yet Congress abandoned even this minimum standard of fiscal responsibility and decided to proceed with a $1.5 trillion tax cut instead. With debt already twice as high as its historical average, financing tax cuts with even more borrowing is reckless.

And the actual bills in the House and Senate are even worse than the $1.5 trillion sticker price — because both include about a half-trillion dollars in phony savings from artificial “sunsets” and other gimmicks. With interest, that means these tax cuts could add $2.2 trillion to the debt.

When we released our fiscal commission report, we were worried about keeping deficits below $500 billion per year and debt below 70 percent of gross domestic product. But if the tax cuts in the current bill are adopted, deficits would exceed $1 trillion by 2020 and debt would exceed 99 percent of GDP by 2027.

Economic growth isn’t going to wash away this debt. Real tax reform can provide a boost to the economy, but higher debt works in the opposite direction. According to the dynamic models from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, the House and Senate tax bills will increase the growth rate by only 0.03 to 0.09 percentage points per year — and that growth will cut their costs by only one-eighth or less.

This country cannot afford another debt-busting tax cut. Luckily, there is another way. The current tax code will give away roughly $18 trillion of tax breaks over the next decade. Our commission called for repealing most of them to pay for lower rates and reduce deficits, adding back only the most-needed ones and only in the most efficient way. By comparison, the latest Senate bill cuts only $3.7 trillion of tax breaks. Most of the largest tax expenditures — including the tax-free treatment of employer-sponsored health care, the mortgage-interest deduction and tax-free bonds — are virtually untouched.

This country critically needs tax reform to improve economic growth. But higher levels of debt will crowd out productive investment, slow wage growth and ultimately undo any gains from reform.

Bringing our debt under control will require reforming and slowing the growth of health and retirement entitlements. Enacting debt-financed tax cuts will make that harder, both substantively and politically. Substantively, because by worsening the debt situation, it will entail more painful changes; politically, because Democrats will be less likely to agree to entitlement reforms if Republicans won’t allow for sufficient revenue.

Many members of Congress have privately told us they would be willing to make the tough votes for ambitious tax and spending reforms as part of a substantive fiscal plan but only if members on the other side jump in the canoe at the same time.

This is the moment of truth for lawmakers who share our concern about our nation’s fiscal future. They can return to the era of deficit denial, or they can stand up for future generations.

I've called both my senators and my representative to express my dismay at the crooked tax plan being foisted on us by the Repugs. All three are against the Repug crap, but have encouraged constituents to call, so they can log how people feel.

[WiseGirl]

We are screwed. I'm so mad this fucking tax bill looks like it is going through. Why the hell aren't people calling their representatives?  Do they not get it? 

[nvmbr02]

5 minutes ago, WiseGirl said:

We are screwed. I'm so mad this fucking tax bill looks like it is going through. Why the hell aren't people calling their representatives?  Do they not get it? 

I think people are calling, but I think the GOP has decided that donors are more important than voters. Voters tend to have shorter memories than the big money donors.

[GreyhoundFan]

An excellent opinion piece: "No serious lawmaker should support this tax bill"

Spoiler

Robert E. Rubin, a co-chairman emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, was U.S. treasury secretary from 1995 to 1999.

Proponents of the Republican tax bill claim it will pay for itself with increased growth. But what if that growth doesn’t materialize? To mollify colleagues concerned about the bill’s deficit impact, Senate GOP leaders are planning to add a new provision: a “trigger” to raise corporate taxes if revenue doesn’t meet a specified target.

This notion is both unworkable and misguided. No serious deficit-minded lawmaker should support it.

Fast-forward a few years. Anyone who has watched Washington in action knows how unlikely it is that the president and Congress will allow the threatened corporate tax increases to take effect. Even if that were to happen, under the reported plan the triggered cuts would offset only a small share of the lost revenue. Meanwhile, if the trigger were to be pulled during an economic downturn, the effect could be to further slow the economy and make deficits even worse.

Here’s why:

According to congressional scorekeepers, the Senate tax bill would cost an estimated $1.4 trillion over 10 years. That’s on paper. In real life, the cost would likely be much higher. The bill includes a number of tax cuts for individuals that are slated to expire after 2025, but future policymakers will very likely extend them, making the long-term deficit impact worse than the stated figure.

Using highly questionable supply-side arguments, the bill’s advocates argue that it will spur so much economic growth, with so many businesses and individuals paying so much more in taxes on their higher earnings, that the measure will largely or entirely pay for itself.

Nevertheless, to assuage deficit-minded senators who aren’t satisfied by this argument, the trigger would activate $350 billion in corporate tax increases if that projection falls short. If the bill were to lose $1.4 trillion, as the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates, the $350 billion would add back only a quarter on each dollar of those lost revenues.

But just as the policymakers of tomorrow are unlikely to let the personal tax cuts expire after 2025, history suggests that they likely won’t let corporate tax increases take effect once triggered.

To comply with Congress’s complicated budget rules, President George W. Bush and Congress crafted the 2001 tax cuts so that they would expire after 10 years. When the time came, however, policymakers eventually made more than 80 percent of them permanent. And they did so even though deficits were high and debt was rising.

Similarly, the federal “pay-as-you-go” law requires that tax cuts and entitlement increases be paid for in the year they’re enacted; it that doesn’t happen, automatic cuts in Medicare and other important programs are supposed to be triggered automatically. But GOP leaders are now publicly stating that once their tax bill is approved, they will follow quickly with legislation to exempt the just-passed tax cuts from this trigger. Why would anybody think they won’t end up doing the same with the trigger, if the need arises?

But let’s presume for a moment that lawmakers would let the $350 billion in corporate tax increases take effect. That could cause more harm than good.

Let’s say that the economy is weak in the year the tax increases are triggered. That would be a bad time to raise taxes; by taking money out of the economy, a tax increase then could push a weakened economy into recession. And a struggling economy weakened by a tax increase could mean even lower federal tax receipts from businesses and individuals, undercutting the purpose of the corporate tax increase to begin with.

Deficit-minded senators are right to be concerned about our fiscal future. Even under current tax and spending policies — much less a big tax cut that would make matters substantially worse — the nation’s outstanding debt is expected to rise significantly as a share of the economy in the coming years and decades. If left unaddressed, that would weaken the economy over time, eroding the living standards of our children and grandchildren.

At some point, we’re going to have to address the nation’s rising debt. For now, at least, Congress should not make things worse.

As for the trigger, no one should be fooled. Rather than mitigating the impact of future revenue losses, it will likely prove a toothless tiger whose main function was to provide cover for deficit-increasing tax cuts. The policymakers of tomorrow almost certainly will let it fall by the wayside. The time to prevent the president and Congress from enacting misguided tax cuts that swell the debt is now.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Why it’s such a big deal the Senate tax bill would add $1 trillion to debt"

Spoiler

One of the most controversial aspects of President Trump's tax plan is how much it costs. Republicans approved adding up to $1.5 trillion to America's debt to pay for tax cuts for businesses and individuals, but they claimed that the price tag won't be nearly that high because the plan would unleash a lot more economic growth.

Now Congress's official estimators have weighed in: The Senate GOP bill would add $1 trillion to the debt even after accounting for economic growth generated by the tax cuts. The estimate from the Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan group of experts, was released Thursday afternoon as lawmakers hotly debated the tax bill on the Senate floor.

JCT found that the Senate GOP tax plan would cause faster economic growth -- about 0.8 percent more in 2027. But that amount of growth only covers about a third of the costs, far short of what is needed to be revenue-neutral tax reform as the White House initially claimed.

Republican leaders had originally intended to vote on the Senate bill before the JCT's final cost estimate was released, but JCT rushed to get the analysis done hours before the vote. Several Republicans senators, including Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), have raised serious concerns about how much the tax plan would add to the debt. He wanted to see the nonpartisan estimate.

“Everyone has known from Day 1 this is very important to me,” Corker said.

Corker is not the only person worried about America's $20 trillion debt rising even higher. Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs put out a warning Thursday morning that the U.S. debt is on track to hit unsustainable levels in coming years. Their note followed on the heels of testimony from Federal Reserve Chair Janet L. Yellen, who cautioned that the country's growing debt is “the type of thing that should keep people awake at night.”

The White House originally argued that the tax cuts would pay for themselves, but almost all independent economists and forecasters said it wouldn't go that far. The JCT estimate ended up aligning closely with the findings of the independent groups like the Tax Foundation, the Tax Policy Center and the Committee for a Responsible Fiscal Budget.

Some Republican lawmakers tried to downplay the JCT forecast, arguing that no one can truly know how much growth will come from the tax cuts and that there will still be more changes to the bill before the final vote. The JCT estimate doesn't include those final changes.

“We can debate the exact growth that will result this bill, but we can all agree that this will help to grow the economy if we’re following basic economic theory,” said Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) Wednesday night.

Democrats continue to argue the Senate bill pays for large corporate tax cuts by forcing the American people to pay a substantial price.

“It fills our children and grandchildren’s boats with additional debt. They are losers,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

Goldman noted Thursday that America's debt is already at the highest level since 1950 as a fraction of the economy (the so-called debt-to-GDP ratio). The tax bill would make that higher.

“The tax reform bill and spending increases that are making their way through Congress should increase the deficit further, raising it from 3.2% of GDP in 2016 to 5.1% in 2021,” Goldman wrote.

Scary stuff.

[GreyhoundFan]

A sobering perspective: "I’m a Depression historian. The GOP tax bill is straight out of 1929."

Spoiler

“There are two ideas of government,” William Jennings Bryan declared in his 1896 “Cross of Gold” speech. “There are those who believe that if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.”

That was more than three decades before the collapse of the economy in 1929. The crash followed a decade of Republican control of the federal government during which trickle-down policies, including massive tax cuts for the rich, produced the greatest concentration of income in the accounts of the richest 0.01 percent at any time between World War I and 2007 (when trickle-down economics, tax cuts for the hyper-rich, and deregulation again resulted in another economic collapse).

Yet the plain fact that the trickle-down approach has never worked leaves Republicans unfazed. The GOP has been singing from the Market-is-God hymnal for well over a century, telling us that deregulation, tax cuts for the rich, and the concentration of ever more wealth in the bloated accounts of the richest people will result in prosperity for the rest of us. The party is now trying to pass a scam that throws a few crumbs to the middle class (temporarily — millions of middle-class Americans will soon see a tax hike if the bill is enacted) while heaping benefits on the super-rich, multiplying the national debt and endangering the American economy.

As a historian of the Great Depression, I can say: I’ve seen this show before.

In 1926, Calvin Coolidge’s treasury secretary, Andrew Mellon, one of the world’s richest men, pushed through a massive tax cut that would substantially contribute to the causes of the Great Depression. Republican Sen. George Norris of Nebraska said that Mellon himself would reap from the tax bill “a larger personal reduction [in taxes] than the aggregate of practically all the taxpayers in the state of Nebraska.” The same is true now of Donald Trump, the Koch Brothers, Sheldon Adelson and other fabulously rich people.

During the 1920s, Republicans almost literally worshiped business. “The business of America,” Coolidge proclaimed, “is business.” Coolidge also remarked that, “The man who builds a factory builds a temple,” and “the man who works there worships there.” That faith in the Market as God has been the Republican religion ever since. A few months after he became president in 1981, Ronald Reagan praised Coolidge for cutting “taxes four times” and said “we had probably the greatest growth in prosperity that we’ve ever known.” Reagan said nothing about what happened to “Coolidge Prosperity” a few months after he left office.

In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt called for “bold, persistent experimentation” and said: “It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” The contrasting position of Republicans then and now is: Take the method and try it. If it fails, deny its failure and try it again. And again. And again.

When Bill Clinton proposed a modest increase in the top marginal tax rate in his 1993 budget, every Republican voted against it. Trickle-down economists proclaimed that it would lead to economic disaster. But the tax increase on the wealthy was followed by one of the greatest periods of prosperity in American history and resulted in a budget surplus. When the Republicans came back into power in 2001, the administration of George W. Bush pushed the opposite policies, which had invariably produced calamity in the past. Predictably, that happened again in 2008.

Just how disastrous would the proposed reincarnation of the failed Republican trickle-down policies of the past be for the American people and the future of the nation? A few ways:

• Repealing the estate tax, or, as Republicans have dubbed it, the “death tax.” But the estate tax is not a tax on the dead; it is a tax on their heirs. Repeal would reverse an important aspect of the American Revolution and establish an American hereditary aristocracy. If your estate is not above $11 million, your benefits from this portion of the GOP’s tax cut will be a nice round number: zero.
• Eliminating deductions for state and local taxes. The GOP has called these deductions favoritism for people who live in high-tax states. In fact, ending deductibility of state and local taxes would tax income that has already been taxed away from a taxpayer. It is, quite simply, double taxation.
• Repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax, which assures that wealthy people who hire accountants to find all the obscure ways to avoid taxes cannot escape taxation altogether. Repealing it would save Trump millions.
• Extending the “pass-through” provision to noncorporate businesses, including some 500 entities Trump owns. It would allow the owners of these businesses to pay taxes at 25 percent, instead of 39.9 percent. This provision would allow Wall Street fund managers, among other very wealthy people, to pay a lower tax rate than many middle-class Americans pay.
• Ending the deductibility of large medical expenses.
• Taxing waived tuition for college students, ending deductibility for student loan payments, and even disallowing teachers from deducting what they spend on school supplies for their students.
• Ending the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, which would cause 13 million Americans to lose health insurance and result in much higher premiums for those who do get insurance through the exchanges. The Congressional Budget Office has indicated that, if enacted, the Republican tax bill may force deep cuts in Medicare through a generally unknown budget rule that its deficits would trigger.

The analysis of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that people making less than $100,000 a year (approximately 80 percent of American households) will have their taxes increased while the millionaires and billionaires will make off like bandits.

In the 1920s, Republicans were in full control of the federal government and used that power to pursue their objective to “make the well-to-do prosperous.” It didn’t “leak through on those below.” In that decade, the mass-production American economy became dependent on mass consumption. For it to work, the masses need a sufficient share of the national income to be able to consume what is being produced.

Republican policies in the ’20s instead pushed to concentrate more of the income at the top. Nine decades later, Republicans are rushing to do it again — and they are sprinting toward an economic cliff. Another round of Government of the People, by the Republicans, for the super-rich will be catastrophic. The American people must call a halt before it’s too late.

I know my senators are sick of hearing from me, but I have called a couple of times about this horrible, distressing plan.

[GreyhoundFan]

Another good one from Jennifer Rubin: "Et tu, Sen. McCain?"

Spoiler

In July, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said this on the floor of the Senate in announcing his opposition to a dog’s breakfast of a health-care bill that bypassed regular order:

Let’s trust each other. Let’s return to regular order. We’ve been spinning our wheels on too many important issues because we keep trying to find a way to win without help from across the aisle. That’s an approach that’s been employed by both sides, mandating legislation from the top down, without any support from the other side, with all the parliamentary maneuvers that requires. …

We’ve tried to do this by coming up with a proposal behind closed doors in consultation with the administration, then springing it on skeptical members, trying to convince them it’s better than nothing, asking us to swallow our doubts and force it past a unified opposition. I don’t think that is going to work in the end. And it probably shouldn’t. …

Why don’t we try the old way of legislating in the Senate, the way our rules and customs encourage us to act. If this process ends in failure, which seem likely, then let’s return to regular order.

Today he largely eviscerated his own message and plea for Senate comity when he announced that he’d support a partisan tax bill that is every bit as contemptuous of regular order as was the health-care bill. He said in a statement: “I believe this legislation, though far from perfect, would enhance American competitiveness, boost the economy, and provide long overdue tax relief for middle-class families.” Of course, he could have demanded a better, bipartisan bill produced through regular order — and kept his reputation as a man above partisan politics intact.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) on the floor declared:

From the very beginning, the Republican tax bill has made a mockery, a mockery, of the legislative process.

Republican leaders disappeared behind closed doors and negotiated a framework for a tax bill, without a shred of Democratic input. Then Republican leaders wrote a bill, behind closed doors, without a shred of Democratic input. Republicans brought that bill through a markup in the Finance Committee, where it underwent the scrutiny of ONE – I repeat, ONE – expert witness. That’s it. Finance Committee Democrats offered sixty amendments to the bill but Republicans rejected every single one. Committee Republicans made it crystal clear they were not interested in bipartisanship.

Now that bill is before us on the floor. Even further, significant changes likely will be made by the Majority Leader today, he will get huge changes in a bill today and try to vote on it tonight… and this is tax, one of the most complicated issues before us. These changes and the way the Majority Leader is handling this make it impossible for any independent analyst to get a good look at the bill and how it would impact our country.

From the one-sidedness with which it was drafted to the reckless haste with which it was considered – the Republican tax bill has failed to go through anything, anything, resembling the normal legislative process.

Before the night is out, I hope all of my Republican friends ask themselves if this is the way they want history to remember how the first major tax bill was passed in over 30 years. I hope they ask themselves if this process has lived up to the fine traditions of this body, as they were eloquently described by my friends the Senators from Arizona – both senior and junior.

At least with McCain, it was not to be. He remains an American hero, but even heroes make terrible errors and undermine their own legacy. “The American people are clamoring for us to work together. They believe our politics is broken,” said Schumer. “They think our politics is starved of common sense and compromise, and it is. The way this tax bill is being rammed through is exactly why the American people think our politics is so broken.” McCain, to our grave disappointment, went with the crowd on this one, making our politics that much worse.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

One more good opinion piece about the tax travesty: "Apparently Republicans want to kick the middle class in the face"

Spoiler

It’s not enough to give money to rich people. Apparently, Republicans want to kick the poor and middle class in the face, too.

I used to think the Republican Party’s obsession with top-heavy tax cuts was about pleasing wealthy donors and maybe also fulfilling some misguided Randian fantasy. If the poor and middle class happened to be collateral damage, so be it.

But it’s starting to look like shafting the little guy has become a feature, not a bug, of the GOP’s budget-busting tax plan.

In years past, when Republicans wished to pass huge tax cuts for the wealthy, they at least offered a few goodies to so-called regular Americans. Take the George W. Bush tax cuts: They were also extremely weighted toward the rich, but some of the provisions helped the middle class and poor. The 2001 legislation made the Child Tax Credit partially refundable, for instance, which for the first time allowed many poor families to receive it.

More important, the Bush tax cuts didn’t actually raise taxes on any households, according to estimates from the Tax Policy Center.

This time around, Republicans have taken a different approach. They’re offsetting their tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy by hiking them further down the income distribution.

Yes, it’s true that lower- and middle-income households would get a tax cut initially. But according to Congress’s own official nonpartisan scorekeepers, by 2027 the Senate tax bill would actually raise taxes on households making less than $75,000. That’s the case even if you strip out the controversial effects of repealing the individual mandate.

No wonder this bill is less popular than any major change in federal tax policy since at least 1981.  

But wait, it gets worse. Higher taxes aren’t the only way in which Republicans plan to punish the poor and middle class. They also plan to gut the government services these populations depend on.

This tax bill is merely a prelude to, or perhaps an excuse for, shredding the social safety net.

Despite all those fanciful promises about how tax cuts will pay for themselves, Republican politicians know their legislation will blow a major hole in the deficit. According to lawmakers’ own official scorekeepers, the Senate bill would cost $1 trillion over the coming decade, even after accounting for additional economic growth.

And in recent days and weeks, prominent Republicans have pledged to patch over this budget hole by cutting programs that millions of Americans need to get by.

At an event on Wednesday, for example, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) linked tax cuts to coming entitlement cuts. 

“Many argue that you can’t cut taxes because it will drive up the deficit,” he said. “But we have to do two things. We have to generate economic growth which generates revenue, while reducing spending. That will mean instituting structural changes to Social Security and Medicare for the future.”

At another event this week, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) said that once the tax bill was done, “welfare reform” — code for rolling back means-tested benefits — was on the agenda.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) of course has been trying to block-grant Medicaid and other safety-net programs for years. At a recent town hall, when asked why the tax bill wasn’t paid for through spending cuts, he assured the audience that spending cuts would be coming quite soon.

Even President Trump, supposed defender of the downtrodden, remarked at a recent Cabinet meeting: “We’re looking very strongly at welfare reform, and that’ll all take place right after taxes, very soon, very shortly after taxes.” He added that such a policy was “desperately needed in our country.”

You might question these pledges because cutting entitlements and other safety-net programs is easier said than done. Republicans learned this when they tried and failed to roll back Medicaid earlier this year.

But it’s worth noting that if Trump signs tax cuts into law in December, some spending cuts would be triggered automatically in January — without lawmakers having to lift a single finger or herd a single cat. Medicare alone would be slashed by $25 billion between January and September.

Such cuts would be triggered by a law known as statutory PAYGO, which was designed to promote fiscal responsibility. Overriding the law requires 60 Senate votes. Even if Democrats get on board with cleaning up the GOP’s budget mess, recent comments suggest not all Senate or House Republicans may choose to join them.

Income inequality is near record highs, and yet Republicans’ regressive tax and spending plans forge forward. It’s time for voters to ask their elected officials: How much upward distribution of wealth will ever be enough?

Yeah, I feel like I've been kicked in the face. Over and over.

[candygirl200413]

I really think that the repugs are just over being failures that they could care less and just push this horrid shit through. But they also don't know really how to do shit because you'd think they'd be able to pass all that they want with a majority in all three parts. 

[GrumpyGran]

9 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

I really think that the repugs are just over being failures that they could care less and just push this horrid shit through. But they also don't know really how to do shit because you'd think they'd be able to pass all that they want with a majority in all three parts. 

I think there are a few of them who still have a hollow shell of a soul and know that all of this is just horrid so they are struggling. Remember, even though they are all Republicans, within the party there is a spectrum relating to potential time left in office, the actual values of the majority of their constituents(Alabama vs Ohio), and most importantly how in debt they are now, and in the future, to these big corporations.

[AmazonGrace]

Y'all remember Blake Farenthold, right? Him of the pajama picture fame?

Whoda thunk that he'd sexually harass people.

 

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/01/blake-farenthold-taxpayer-funds-sexual-harassment-274458

[onekidanddone]

Called my Senators to remind them to vote NO.  I'm in a blue state so it is kinda a no brainier, but it never huts to remind them.  I thanks both women who answered the phone because they really work hard and must be on the phone non-stop. One of hem sorta chuckled and said "Thank you for you call.  Of course he will be voting no".

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

Y'all remember Blake Farenthold, right? Him of the pajama picture fame?

Whoda thunk that he'd sexually harass people.

 

https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/01/blake-farenthold-taxpayer-funds-sexual-harassment-274458

Quote

“Farenthold regularly drank to excess, and because of his tendency to flirt, the staffers who accompanied him to Capitol Hill functions would joke that they had to be on ‘red head patrol to keep him out of trouble,’” Greene’s complaint alleged. “On one occasion, prior to February 2014, during a staff meeting at which [Greene] was in attendance, Farenthold disclosed that a female lobbyist had propositioned him for a ‘threesome.’”

Seeing as the only quality that Farenthold possesses that might possibly attract a woman is his net worth, I find this claim very hard to believe. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Republicans push a craven, partisan monstrosity"

Spoiler

Students often leave term papers to the last minute. Repair folks frequently arrive at the far end of the time they promised. And some basketball players don’t turn it on until the fourth quarter.

But the stakes in all these close shaves are relatively low. Not so with Republicans in Congress. They are reordering large parts of the American economy on the fly with little forethought and virtually no debate.

True, legislating has been routinely compared with sausagemaking. It’s an activity you don’t want to watch too closely. But when Congress did truly big things in the past — the Affordable Care Act, the major tax cuts of the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush eras, the tax increases under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — there was serious discussion over an extended time.

Debate and careful negotiation over trade-offs in a genuinely bipartisan context was at the heart of the success of the last comprehensive tax reform in 1986. By contrast, the GOP’s extravaganza this year is entirely partisan, full of breaks for favored interests and punishments for those the party regards as its political enemies. To call it “reform” is an affront to generations of good-government advocates in both parties.

Moreover, this tax monstrosity is so filled with gimmicks, carve-outs and penalties for various sectors of our economy that its impact will be far greater than the Republican tax cuts of the 1980s and early 2000s. Those voting for it have given little thought to how it will affect many sectors of American life. This is exactly what its sponsors wanted. Scrutiny is this bill’s greatest foe.

Besides pumping up already dangerous levels of economic inequality, the bill will add at least $1 trillion (and probably much more) to the debt at a moment when adding to deficits serves no useful economic purpose. This, in turn, could lead to interest rate increases that will dampen whatever positive effects the tax cuts in the bill (many of them temporary) will have on growth.

It could undermine our system of higher education, which is one of the great prides of our country. What sense does it make to provide relief to heirs who did nothing to earn their inheritances other than be born while increasing taxes on graduate students, whose incomes are already modest? Isn’t there a near-universal consensus that investing in the skills of our people and in research is the way to foster growth and future well-being?

By tearing away the deductibility of state income and sales taxes, this legislative concoction could plunge some of our largest states — California, New York and New Jersey among them — into fiscal crises or force them to slash the help they give their lower-income citizens. Does anyone of right mind believe this will be good for our economy, let alone for social justice?

Ah, but these states are Democratic, so Republicans are happy to abuse their power to take a shot at their partisan opponents.

Even defensible aspects of the bill have not been examined closely to see what impact they will have. For example, the legislation limits the ability of businesses to deduct interest payments from their taxes. There is a case for preferring equity over debt. But I bet no more than 5 percent of the lawmakers voting on this proposal have thought much about the subject one way or the other.

And isn’t it funny, as former Federal Reserve vice chairman Alan Blinder pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, that so many of the provisions — keeping intact “egregious loopholes for real estate developers,” generously treating “pass-through” income, killing the alternative minimum tax and being kind to heirs — just happen to be particularly good for a certain president of the United States (who claimed he was fighting for the little guy) and for his family?

You might find it entertaining that Republicans had to keep rewriting their bill right up to the very last minute, as if they were college sophomores looking at a clock. Senate GOP leaders had to delay a vote and pull an all-nighter when the Senate’s own parliamentarian ruled that a “trigger” provision serving as a fig leaf for supposed deficit hawks was illegitimate.

But there is nothing funny about capricious legislating on an artificial deadline created solely to escape accountability. Anyone who votes for this bill is endorsing government for the few imposed by the reckless.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Wow: "Treasury fund paid for Rep. Farenthold’s $84,000 sexual harassment settlement"

Spoiler

Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Tex.) used $84,000 in taxpayer dollars to settle with a former aide who sued him for sexual harassment in 2014, The Washington Post confirmed Friday.

Farenthold is the first member of Congress confirmed to have benefited from a little-known Treasury Department fund created to cover workplace settlements involving lawmakers. The congressional Office of Compliance (OOC) disclosed Friday that the fund paid for only one sexual harassment settlement involving a House lawmaker’s office in the past five years, but did not name Farenthold.

The congressman’s former communications director, Lauren Greene, accused him of making sexually charged comments designed to gauge whether she was interested in a sexual relationship. She filed suit in after going through the OOC’s counseling and mediation process. Farenthold denied wrongdoing in the case.

The revelation sheds new light on the secretive process that lawmakers use to settle workplace complaints against them and their aides using public funds. In total, the Treasury fund has paid for settlements related to six claims against House members’ offices since 2013, the OOC wrote in a letter Friday to the Committee on House Administration. The five complaints not pertaining to sexual harassment alleged one or more forms of employment discrimination and in some cases, retaliation, the letter stated.

The fund is not the only source of settlement payments for lawmakers accused of misconduct. Members such as Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) have used their office budgets to settle — and conceal — complaints. Settlements reached using this method are not tracked, and they are difficult to identify, even in congressional offices’ payment records.

The House Ethics Committee, requesting documents from the OOC, indicated Friday that it will review all formal claims of sexual harassment and other misconduct involving members and employees of the lower chamber.

That review — the committee’s first major action following a public outcry over sexual harassment in Congress — will encompass all current members and employees of the House who have been the subject of complaints, not just those who paid settlements through the Treasury fund.

The Senate Ethics Committee on Friday requested the Office of Compliance provide a same settlement breakdown for the Senate.

Also included in the list of settlements was a $150,000 confidential agreement over a claim of veterans status discrimination and retaliation. The Post confirmed that the settlement involved the House Select Committee on Benghazi, its then-chairman Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and a former investigator, Bradley Podliska, who alleged that he was wrongfully fired because he took leave for Air Force reservist duty and refused to focus his work on Hillary Clinton.

Ethics watchdog groups welcomed the request as a sign that the panel might wield its power to address mounting allegations of misconduct on Capitol Hill.

“A nice change of pace to see the Ethics Committee asserting its jurisdiction,” Meredith McGehee, executive director of Issue One, a nonprofit focused on government ethics, wrote in an email. “Usually they are looking for ways to avoid taking on hard questions, hoping the member leaves or burying the allegations until the ‘heat’ goes away.”

Under the law, the executive director of the Office of Compliance has authority to share records of hearings and decisions with the House and Senate ethics committees. The executive director can share all written and oral testimony from hearings and decisions, but not information discussed in mediation.

Laura Cech, spokeswoman for the OOC, said the office’s current officials do not recall ever providing records of hearings or decisions to congressional ethics committees.

It is not clear whether Ethics Committee Chairwoman Susan Brooks (R-Ind.) and ranking Democrat Ted Deutch (Fla.), who requested records from the OOC on Friday, plan to make them public or use the information to investigate lawmakers who have been accused of misconduct.

The panel is also probing allegations that Conyers behaved inappropriately toward multiple female aides. House Democratic leaders, as well as a number of rank-and-file members, have called for him to resign over the harassment allegations.

The Ethics Committee’s request and the details about the OOC settlements drew a wave of interest on Friday.

Alexis Ronickher, a Washington employment lawyer who has represented congressional employees in workplace complaints, said the settlement figures released Friday show how little money clients like hers recover compared to the private sector.

In addition, she argued, there are considerable emotional and professional risks involved in bringing a claim against a lawmaker.

Greene, the former staffer who sued Farenthold, is now “publicly identified as going against and asserting claims against a member of Congress, and her name throughout the Internet is associated with this,” Ronickher said. “It’s very hard to build a life after that.”

She added that “$84,000 is a very, very modest recompense, particularly given the types of conducts that are being alleged . . . These congressional staffers are not being made whole, whatsoever.”

The Ethics Committee opened an investigation into Farenthold in September 2015 that was still pending as of Friday.

Farenthold has come under fire for comments he made about women, most recently during debates over the health-care overhaul this summer. Farenthold said he would challenge some Republican “female senators from the Northeast” to a duel, if they were men from South Texas, for opposing health-care legislation at the time.

Neither the congressman nor Greene’s lawyer, Les Alderman, would confirm that they were involved in the $84,000 settlement.

“While I 100% support more transparency with respect to claims against members of Congress, I can neither confirm nor deny that settlement involved my office as the Congressional Accountability Act prohibits me from answering that question,” Farenthold said in a statement.

I'm glad my tax dollars are going to pay for settlements so the scuzzy perpetrators don't have to pay. End sarcasm.

[candygirl200413]

Keep having C-Span on all day in my house.

[Cartmann99]

Just now, candygirl200413 said:

Keep having C-Span on all day in my house.

I'm listening to their audio feed and cursing.

https://www.c-span.org/networks/?channel=radio

[WiseGirl]

6 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

I'm listening to their audio feed and cursing.

https://www.c-span.org/networks/?channel=radio

Cursing big time now that I am awake and these fuckers passed this backroom deal. I'm so angry. Why bother owning a house now? Why bother buying stuff for my students?  Fucking politicians owned by corporations. Screwed over by our own elected officials. Wake up America. This is way too early in the morning to feel this much rage.

[Audrey2]

2 hours ago, WiseGirl said:

Why bother owning a house now? 

Why would the wealthy want any of us to own our own home? They can buy multiple houses without a mortgage, raising prices and shutting those who need financing out through bidding wars and full cash offers. In their unstated fantasies, we could be paying rent to them untill we die! What a revenue stream!

[fraurosena]

All I can say right now to you all is that I offer my commiserations. What an abominable thing for the repugs to do!

This is corruption of the highest order, and they're not even taking the trouble to hide it. What on earth do they think to gain by this? Are they really so short-sighted as to think that if they get enough money from their donors they will be able to buy enough votes to stay in office? How do they think that will work? Do they really believe that the American people are that stupid and gullible?

I don't get it. I truly don't.

I can see only one silver lining. It's a tenuous one, but still. All the rot in American politics is being laid bare. Seeing that, acknowledging that, gives you the opportunity to tackle the problems and build a new system from the foundations up. It's a chance I hope will be picked up when the time comes and the repugs topple. I hope that it won't simply be a covering up of the rot with some slight changes, but that the rot is mercilessly carved out, and the wound cauterized to prevent further gangrene setting in. It's time for a complete overhaul of your political system and for America to drag itself into the 21st century, instead of clinging to rules and laws from a Constitution that was written out centuries ago and hasn't been updated to fit modern times. Your founding fathers were innovators in their time, but that doesn't mean that what they thought up and fitted perfectly for them then is flawlessly applicable to the current times.

So please, grab that chance. Vote wisely. Become candidates yourselves, if possible. Make sure that change happens.

[EowynW]

I am so angry and discouraged. We saving to buy or build a little house on some land. And haven't started our family yet. This is making us seriously doubt having children. 

[formergothardite]

Is this fixable? If this monster of a bill passes(and I think it will), can we undo this if we get people with compassion and morals in office? Or are we just screwed for years? 

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, Audrey2 said:

Why would the wealthy want any of us to own our own home? They can buy multiple houses without a mortgage, raising prices and shutting those who need financing out through bidding wars and full cash offers. In their unstated fantasies, we could be paying rent to them untill we die! What a revenue stream!

I watched It's a Wonderful Life again last weekend. Your comment reminds me of the scene where George Bailey is reminding the people who own shares in the  Bailey Bros. Building & Loan Association of what will happen if they panic and sell their shares to Mr. Potter.

Remember that the bill passed in the Senate and the one in the House are different, and they either have to go to conference and work out their differences, or the House has to agree to pass the Senate bill as-is.

What I'm saying is, there is still time for some people to change their minds if they receive enough blowback from their constituents. My MOC only cares about Ayn Rand Jesus, guns, and fetuses, so he's no help, but some of you live in districts where your MOC would at least pause before running you over to get a tax cut, so please let them know how you feel!

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, fraurosena said:

Do they really believe that the American people are that stupid and gullible?

Sadly many American people have shown them that they are that gullible and stupid. And they are running with it. These people will elect a child molester, a rapist, an unqualified racist egomaniac looking for a fight. Anyone but a Democrat. They have been brain-washed and can no longer think for themselves. They are told that any negative result is the fault of the other side, even when this is impossible. But they believe it.

As for undoing all of this, it will take time simply because the Republicans have power. We need to start cutting them out and we have to start with the Senate. It would be great to take back the house next year and it's not impossible but the Senate is probably more possible.

I don't know how you'd convince the people of Arizona to put a Dem in Flake's place, and Tennessee, pfft. But I want to see the people of Utah kick old Hatch out. He is dangerous and removing him would go a long way toward fixing that succession problem if the Dems can get the Senate. I'd also love to see Texans get rid of Cruz. And Heller's spot could turn. The party needs to come up with a message and people who can appeal to moderates. Now.

[formergothardite]

4 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

My MOC only cares about Ayn Rand Jesus, guns, and fetuses, so he's no help,

That is pretty much what I have. What makes me so mad is that Tillis has been rambling on about how he wants to move towards a Congress where both sides work together and then he pulls this shit. I'm calling Monday and asking what happened to him wanting to work with the Democrats.