The government is going to run out of money on December 8th. For those of you frantically reaching for your calendars, that is in fact in two days. How, you ask? And, you know, why??
A few months ago, on September 13 to be exact, as we neared our last government funding deadline, Chuck and Nancy (or Senator Schumer and Representative Pelosi for those of us not limited to 140 characters) headed up to the White House so that Trump could try to sell them on a deal. What they thought might be a tough conversation or even just the beginning of a protracted negotiation turned out to be a pleasant lunch over Chinese food in which Trump gave them everything they wanted. In exchange for their votes on a much shorter continuing resolution to fund the government than the Republicans wanted, they got a promise that Trump would help the DACA recipients whose lives he had so recently upended. As we near the deadline on that CR (December 8th), the budget fights that led us to that moment could very well come to a head.
Or we could force it.
The Republican Party has liked to claim for some time now, to be a “big tent” party. In theory, this means they celebrate diverse viewpoints and people with different policy ideas. In practice, this means they welcome anyone as long as they will vote for tax cuts for the super wealthy, and they enjoy an absurdly awkward kind of power. They can get a president elected, but they can’t repeal the Affordable Care Act. They can (maybe) pass some kind of Frankenstein’s monster of a tax reform bill, but they can’t pass a budget. Because they are the party of “moderates” who want to cut spending but not that much, and those who would really enjoy a more feudal system of government, their budget priorities are often in conflict.
Instead of trying to pass a budget by this Friday (because apparently there are some bills they don’t want to try to force through in the middle of the night), the current GOP plan is to pass another continuing resolution — one that would expire on December 22 instead. And in an attempt to push that to December 30, some of those medieval reprobates, the House Freedom Caucus, those purveyors of “unfettered capitalism,” almost killed the tax bill.
If strategy of the Freedom Caucus sounds confusing, it’s because it is. And no clear explanation pops up on the first two pages of a google search. But many suspect that they are afraid that the pressure of passing a spending bill before Christmas will force their GOP colleagues to cave to a raw deal.
Cave to whom, you ask? Surely not the Democrats, those losers of elections. Those impotent defenders of health care and progressive tax codes. Surely not Chuck and Nancy, nor those cloying masses shouting about insurance mandates and frantically explaining CSR payments to their friends.
Yes, my friends. They fear us.
Republicans walk a rather precarious tightrope. Make their bill too friendly to the would-be feudal overlords and they risk losing more “moderate” Republicans in purple districts. Tilt too closely to those “moderates” and they lose the Freedom Caucus. It’s a constantly shifting balancing act — how many people, exactly, can we screw over before we lose too many votes to screw anyone over. With health care, they lost that fight. With tax reform, they are terrifyingly close to winning it. But very often, when the Freedom Caucus sticks to its guns and refuses to pass anything short of draconian, Republicans need Democrats to pass the budget.
What does this mean for us?
Well, we can’t shut down the government. We’re not in charge here. We don’t have the votes to do anything (something more vicious critics of the Democrats would do well to remember). But we can demand that our members of Congress refuse to vote for a budget unless certain demands have been met — a DREAM Act with a path to citizenship for one. Funding for CHIP. The Alexander-Murray bipartisan deal to stabilize the insurance markets. If Republicans need our help to keep the government going, they are going to have to give us a little something first.
Because if they can’t do it with their own party, which controls both the executive and the legislative branches, well, that sounds like a personal problem.
Of course, it’s not. Many of us remember the government shutdown of 2013. National Parks close, many who work in government have to stay home or work without pay, EPA inspections stop, and the blame game makes Twitter even more toxic than usual. A government shutdown is a problem that belongs to all of us. But some things are more important. Like health insurance for children. And a strong and unambiguous fix to the underground economy we have allowed to exist under our noses, that we have benefited from, that we have taken advantage of, and that is built on the blood and sweat, tears and separate families, of the undocumented Americans who have made their home here.
Those of us who live in blue states have called our members of Congress, have pestered our friends, have gotten drunk and wailed into the night about our futility. We drink our wine, and we tweet at Senators who have no obligation to listen to us. We try to raise a groundswell, but it’s kind of hard from our skyscrapers. Well, now it’s our turn. We have leverage here, and we have to use it.
Call your members of Congress. Demand that they join Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders and others in refusing to vote for a government funding bill unless the DREAM Act is passed, CHIP is funded, and the ACA is stabilized.
We might not win. In fact, if “moderate” Republicans like Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Jeff Flake and co. punk the fuck out again and sell their souls for the spectre of Koch donations, we probably won’t. But we have an opportunity to tell the vulnerable of this country, to tell the oppressed, and the hurt, and the struggling, that we won’t give them up. We owe it to ourselves, and we owe it to them. So pick up the phone, write an email, and call your friends.
We have work to do. And very little time to do it.
This is what the Republican Party stands for: NO HEALTH CARE, TAX THE POOR, FEED THE RICH, GIVE MENTALLY DISABLED ACCESS TO GUNS, ALLOW GUN SILENCERS, and the latest new edition: SEXUAL MISCONDUCT. Grab an adult or a minor, just make sure she’s a she.
How many people spent last week in a state of panic over the tax bill and calling representatives and sending ominous text messages to friends and family? Uhg. What if we lived in a world where we didn’t have to exert that kind of energy on a regular basis just to keep representatives from screwing over their constituents?!
How is it possible that the GOP is so fractured that they can’t pass a TAX CUT in broad daylight?? Without discrediting independent analysis? You don’t pass a bill that you’re proud of and easily have the votes for in the middle of the night on a Friday. The fact that this thing didn’t pass until 2am on a Saturday morning should give us all pause. It limits the news coverage and public eyes and for smaller bills up against more urgent deadlines that’s one thing… this can’t be how we get major legislation done.
Cut from the bill at the last minute were things like defining life as starting at conception (you know under the totally innocuous desire to open savings plans for unborn children… a crisis raging the nation), and taxing some (but not all) foreign airlines… Why were they pulled? B/c that’s not how you legislate.
Then just yesterday there was a moment where the Freedom Caucus was withholding consent to move to conference on the bill (which thank god is so riddled with mistakes and oversights that it HAS to go to conference and can’t just be voted on by the House) in order to push Congress towards a longer CR on the needed spending bill.
We’re at the brink of government shutdown weeks before Christmas and all because the Republican controlled Senate and House and WHITE HOUSE can’t get their shit together to pass something. And honestly… shut it down. The disruption of government programs and widespread furlough would be terrible, but it would be an albatross in the neck of the GOP they couldn’t escape. The Dems should argue for any number of righteous causes and let the pieces fall where they may.
What it all comes down to, honestly, is that this country doesn’t have leaders… we don’t have a President or Speaker or Majority Leader. What we have are criminals and accomplices.
Bob Mueller continues to be a source of hope in the darkness. What does it say about the state of our country that former aides to the President (his National Security Advisor no less) being indicted can elicit such cheers and joy? Mueller gives us hope that in some ways criminals will be held accountable for their actions. The charge of lying to the FBI is so minor in relation to what we’ve seen evidence of with regards to Flynn that we can’t help but hope he’s cooperating with the investigation and turning over evidence on people further up the food chain. And clearly people are starting to get nervous.
I had to fire General Flynn because he lied to the Vice President and the FBI. He has pled guilty to those lies. It is a shame because his actions during the transition were lawful. There was nothing to hide!
Okay so I… just… well…. This tweet (and the coordinated backpedaling) just reminds me of the Last Week Tonight bit where Donald Trump says something batshit crazy and incriminating and Jon Oliver drops the banner and pops confetti and declares that we got him. It’s a bit b/c it happens SO GODDAMN OFTEN and yet we’re still here folks… we’ll still be here for quite some time.
If Trump knew that Flynn lied to the FBI when he fired him and then proceeded to pressure Comey to let it go, he was willfully obstructing justice. Because he’s a criminal.
While we were all paying attention to the tax bill, Trump started plans to slash national monuments and basically steal national land for corporate interests.During his final days in office, Obama designated Bears Ears a National Monument. The site is considered sacred to many Native American tribes in the area and the National Monument designation protects it by limiting use. Look, it’s big for a monument. I’ll admit that. However, it’s not the largest and it’s covering many individual sites… and Trump’s decision to “free” the area of its national monument status and reopen it for potential development shows a sickening disrespect of Native peoples and their land.
And because a pedophile is better than a Democrat, the President and the RNC have gone back to fully (cough*financially*cough) supporting Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate Race. Look can’t we all just agree that someone with wide ranging accusations of sexual assault shouldn’t be allowed in the Senate? Can’t we agree that men in their thirties shouldn’t date children? Can’t we agree that ENOUGH IS ENOUGH FUCKING HELL and stop this utter embodiment of moral decay and right-wing hatred from becoming a US Senator? Fingers crossed.
Sooooooo yeah the world is burning. If you’re done shaking off the utter panic of last week and you know general disgust of the daily onslaught of new reports of terrible things the GOP is doing or backing or staying silent on, here are some things you can do:
Call your representatives and keep fighting this tax bill. 202–224–3121
Ask Congress to vote on the Dream Act before moving forward with a new spending bill. Be ready to SHUT IT DOWN unless we get some sort of concrete action for the thousands of undocumented Americans now twisting in the wind.
No one likes paying taxes. Even progressives who believe in the idea of a big, compassionate government that provides for its citizens grumble all the way up to tax day. The forms are complicated, there are a lot of deductions, and still it always seems like someone else is always faring better. Instead of fixing the tax code, for years we’ve just been adding things to it like Christmas ornaments and tangles of tinsel until the whole thing is just about ready to fall over if the cat so much as looks as it wrong.
We need to reform the tax code. No one disagrees with that. It’s regressive in many places, with a disproportionate burden falling on the poor. It’s too complicated, it takes too long, and there are too many loopholes. So it makes sense that tax reform is a key part of the Republican platform.
What doesn’t make sense, however, are the proposals they put forward.
The bills put forth by the Republicans share an overall thesis — the desire to cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%. Where the House and the Senate bills differ is in how they’ve chosen to pay for it. Cutting the corporate tax rate by 15% will cost upwards of $1.3 trillion dollars over ten years. With the other tax cuts they have put forward both bills could cost as much $1.7 trillion dollars. While there are no plans to offset all those costs, for the bill to pass the Senate via reconciliation (requiring only 51 votes instead of 60 — don’t worry, we explained it here), the GOP does have to reduce the bill’s impact on the deficit over a ten year period.
The House has passed their version of the bill, and it’s honestly a garbage fire. The Senate version has made it out of committee, but has not yet come to the floor for a full vote. If this is all starting to sound a little too familiar, you’re not alone, and it’s only going to get worse.
Both bills also reduce taxes paid for by pass-through companies (like the Trump Organization), and establish a territory based tax system wherein U.S. companies do not have to pay taxes on income earned abroad. Both bills reduce the estate tax, or the tax on inheritances, though the House eventually eliminates it entirely and the Senate bill does not. The broad strokes are similar enough that when I was researching this post, I had to check several times to make sure that Vox explainer I was reading was the right one.
If you’re planning to fight your family about tax reform over the holidays, however, there are probably some more details that you’ll need to know. Below are a couple of quick facts for each of the current pieces of legislation, and the broad argument for and against. Your key talking point, however, is this: Tax reform is a good idea, but this is not tax reform. This is giant, deficit exploding tax cut for the wealthy, paid for by just about everyone who makes less than $500,000 a year. And both bills are designed to benefit the Trump Organization, specifically.
If you need a short version, you can download this PDF with the quick and dirty so you can fight with you family and friends this week. Happy Thanksgiving!
The House bill does a couple of interesting things. First, it consolidates the tax brackets from seven to four. The claim here is that this simplifies the tax code, even though the brackets aren’t what make it difficult for the everyday taxpayer. I don’t know about you, but I had no idea what tax bracket I was in until I started researching this bill.
Second, many Americans will see a tax cut, but not all. And some will see their taxes go up according to the Tax Policy Center. And even more people will see their taxes go up after 2023 when certain provisions of the tax legislation sunset.
Third, what does make filing taxes simpler under the House bill is the elimination of many of the deductions we use to make our taxes lower. To (partially) offset getting rid of these deductions, the standard deduction threshold goes up to $24,000 from $12,000 (this basically means that your first $24,000 is tax free) and the child tax credit goes up from $1000 to $1600. The House Bill also introduces a Flexible Family Credit of $300 a year for individuals and $600 for couples.
Deductions for student loan payments (and most other tax benefits for college)
I make the same amount of money (approximately) as the other assistants in my department at work, but some of them have paid off their student loans already, or didn’t have them. This is going to mean that we’re paying the same in taxes even though I arguably have less money.
Deductions for moving expenses
Deductions for medical expenses
Deductions for plug in (greener) vehicles
We use the tax system as a reward system sometimes, and while that does make the tax code more complicated, in some instances (like this one) it also makes the world a better, more liveable place.
Non-taxable tuition waivers. Basically this one means that the government starts to tax tuition benefits as income. So everyone who receives tuition benefits from the janitors taking night classes to your friends in PhD programs are going to see their taxes go up to a prohibitive level. Holy aristocracy, batman!
State and local tax deductions.
You’ll note that a lot of these things are going to be hard to defend to your conservative relatives. Sometimes saying things like, “sure, but I know it’s going to make paying my student loans harder” can be effective. It makes it personal for people who care about you. But they also probably do take the state and local tax deductions. This is going to be a more effective argument in blue states where those taxes are typically higher, but it’s useful for pointing out the ways in which this bill will affect everyone.
You may also want to ask your relatives why they think the tax breaks for the middle class go away after a few years, but the corporate tax rate stays at 20%.
The Senate does a few things differently. It merely adjusts the seven tax brackets, rather than reducing them. It keeps most of the deductions in tact while also raising the standard deductions to $24,000 and updating the child tax credit. The charitable tax deduction is actually expanded, donations up to 60% of your salary can be deducted, though this primarily benefits the rich who can afford to donate more than half their salary.
To offset its own approximate $1.5 trillion contribution to the deficit, the Senate bill contains two major provisions. The first is that the Senate bill also sunsets middle class tax cuts by 2027 which allows the bill’s impact to stay within the ten year range, which is an attempt to make it eligible for reconciliation. The second provision, however, is the most dangerous
The most dramatic difference is that the Senate bill plans to repeal the individual insurance mandate, a plan which could theoretically save $300 billion. But 13 million people will also lose their insurance and everyone’s premiums will rise (even if you get your insurance through your employer), and some to prohibitive rates. This could lead to 15,600 preventable deaths per year.
I told you the deja vu was going to get worse.
Why Do People Want This?
The argument for all corporate tax breaks and tax breaks for the rich is the idea that it will increase investment, wages, and jobs. The idea is that our corporate tax rate is prohibitive. It prevents companies from expanding, from raising wages or investing their money in the American economy. There are some influential papers that support this idea, though they are the intellectual minority in their fields.
According to Vox, several of these papers have been produced which suggest that corporate taxes are paid by laborers in the form of lower rages — a 1% increase in taxes is offset with a 0.5–1% drop in wages. The data also suggests that “the revenue-maximizing corporate tax rate is about 26 percent, significantly below the US rate.”
This is a fairly standard belief for pro-market conservatives. For them, the market is an equalizing force, and left to its own devices, it rewards good behavior, innovation, and competition, which leads to a better situation for consumers. Businesses, when free from government regulation, and a restrictive corporate tax structure, will take off and we will all benefit.
Other deductions, such as the state and local tax deductions, concentrate wealth in urban and wealthy states, because while everyone is paying federal taxes, the state and local taxes vary. Those with higher state and local taxes get to deduct a higher amount from their federal taxes. (Of course people in urban areas and wealthier states often have a higher cost of living, but who cares.) And the estate tax, some argue, essentially punishes people whose relatives have just died by taxing income that’s already been taxed.
The Problem Is…
There isn’t a whole lot of practical evidence that the market actually works like the Republicans suggest. First, the same Vox rundown talks to another economist, Kimberly Clausing, who points out that there is very little evidence to suggest any kind of connection between wages and corporate tax rates. And while there is evidence to suggest that tax increases during recessions lead to stagnation, we are not currently in a recession. In fact, we in the longest period of post-war economic expansion on record, with record corporate profits, and yet we’ve seen no commensurate rise in wages or investment. And while the corporate tax rate is high at 35%, most companies use a variety of tax shelters and loopholes to avoid paying it. Not taxing their foreign income at all does not exactly encourage them to move their jobs back to the US, and it removes the little revenue we do gain.
Plus, CEOs themselves like Mark Cuban and others, have outright said that corporate tax breaks won’t lead to more investment, and have little influence on their decision making. Better suggestions for investing in the American economy and creating jobs include actually investing in infrastructure.
Dylan Matthews of Vox provides some other ways we can reduce or even eliminate the corporate tax rate as part of a progressive tax system. As with healthcare, Republicans have had upwards of ten years out of power to come up with a plan, and as with healthcare, they failed. Instead, what we have here is something haphazard, cobbled together to excuse a corporate tax cut that isn’t even going to do what they say it’s going to. And their plan, as always to make it harder for average Americans to do things like buy health insurance or go to college. And while lots of provisions don’t make much sense from a tax reform standpoint, they do make sense if your goal isn’t tax reform but concentration of wealth and screwing over liberal “elites.”
This bill isn’t a good facade of a tax reform bill. It is, in fact, a tax cut for the rich paid for by providing no tax cut or even raising taxes on those who are not rich. Even those in the middle class who will see tax breaks for the next few years will not see as many as the rich, and things like cutting or eliminating the estate tax concentrate the wealth in the rich generation after generation. Every piece of this legislation seems specifically designed to ensure the development or entrenchment of an American aristocracy. Even straight, across the board tax cuts can significantly increase the deficit and can be used to justify later cuts for social services, things that help level the playing field.
For conservative family and friends who insist that a smaller government is better, and that Americans know what to do with their money better than the government does, it may be hard to convince them that widespread tax cuts are a problem. But pointing out more efficient ways to grow the economy or reform the system might be helpful. You can also point out the haphazard way the legislation was thrown together or the way the bill concentrates wealth. You can point out that the tax cuts for most Americans aren’t actually tax cuts.
But the hardest part of the conversation is probably going to be that, like much of the conservative agenda these days, both the House and Senate versions of this bill are down right vindictive. And that can be hard to argue against. But armed with the facts, and ready to listen, I hope this summary provides you with what you need to make the more compassionate argument heard.
And before you go, don’t forget to call your senators and ask them to do everything they can to oppose this bill. 202–224–3121.
TNP-TEMP 