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Your first comment was held for moderation, but from now on you should be able to post comments instantly. Just don't post more than one link per comment, as multilink comments are automatically held for moderation. And (my apologies for the delay), as you can see, this sometimes takes a while for me to get to.

As for your comment, you have a point. As Willie Sutton said about banks, "that's where the money is."

Perhaps liberals wouldn't react in such a knee-jerk fashion if the GOP would be honest, instead of lying about "tax cuts targeted to the middle class" and "wealthy people won't get a tax cut." Pretty much everything Trump's said about it is nonsense, for instance.

If the GOP just came out and admitted "these tax cuts are for people who make more in a day than you'll make all year long," then I promise I will praise them for being so honest, for once.

How's that?

:-)

-CW

When you structure a tax collection system the way the U.S. income tax system was structured, poor people are essentially exempted from the system.

A quick visit to the IRS website reveals that the bottom 50% of all income tax payers pay just a whisker over 2% of all the income taxes collected.

Under those rules, it becomes inevitable that tax cuts only benefit the "rich", because the poor never paid any taxes to begin with, which means there ARE no other types of tax cuts OTHER than "taxcutsfortherich".

Heck, I'll even throw in my rock solid guarantee* as an unlicensed contractor that the appliances will come in either nearly matching colors OR have almost fully functional features.

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* Buyer waives all right to judicial review and will submit any contract disputes to binding arbitration using an arbitrator of my choice.

If we allow a family to keep another thousand dollars of their income, what does that mean?

If income of $100,000 nets you a $1,000 tax cut, that means you're getting to keep 1% more of your income and amounts to about $83 a month. If these idiots think a 1% "raise" is a big deal, they are actually dumber than they think we are. Pathetic.

They can renovate their kitchen, they can buy a new car, they can take their family on vacation, they can increase their lifestyle.

Smith Family, you just got a $1,000 tax cut from your Uncle Sam. What are you going to do now?

We're going to Disney World... for 1 whole day. :(

A family with $100,000 annual income in Texas (and probably the majority of America) isn't going to "increase their lifestyle" because they get to keep another 1% of their 6-figure income. *LOL*

Cohn knows he and his bankster buddies cash in when people put down modest down payments and finance the rest... so maybe he's just selling the idea of how great reckless spending is for people instead of completely ignorant about what things cost?

If it's the latter, perhaps I will send him an offer to renovate his kitchen if he pays the $1000 up front.
There's an appliance guy at the flea market near my house where I can get all brand newish appliances and still have enough money left over to slap a coat of paint on his cabinets and floor.

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Somewhere, in a galaxy far far away, there are still Republicans who are deficit hawks.

They didn't appear during the Senate vote on increased military spending supported by Not A Penny More* Democrats, but maybe they'll show up this time.
* excluding the 8 trillion more pennies for war they helped approve

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"a typical family earning $100,000 with two children that has been a standard deductor ... can expect a tax cut of about $1,000....If we allow a family to keep another thousand dollars of their income, what does that mean? They can renovate their kitchen, they can buy a new car, they can take their family on vacation, they can increase their lifestyle."

I'm sure that I don't have to point out how insanely out-of-touch that is, but it's adding to a narrative about how out-of-touch this entire administration, and by extension the GOP, is.

Two easy solutions. First option: rule from the chair that the Club For Growth's deficit projections should be used instead of the CBO projections. Second option: have the law say that, starting ten years after the passage of the bill, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and the DoD divert all of their budget to deficit reduction. The tax cut is permanent, and a subsequent Congress has to figure out how to fund it instead (spoiler: by raising taxes on the middle class and/or by running an even bigger deficit).

A carriage turns back into a pumpkin, and people revert back to rodents... so no perceptible change for the majority of Congress.

Goodbye HHS Secretary Tom Price. You can buy your own one-way commercial airline ticket home to Georgia. You're living on your own dime now... hypocrite.

When HuffPost interviewed conservative economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin about the deficit impact of tax cuts on Thursday, the former CBO director was emphatic: Tax cuts do not pay for themselves. “We have all sorts of evidence to that effect,” Holtz-Eakin said. “I don’t think there’s any evidence, over any interval, that they pay for themselves. Over any sustained period, they don’t.”

Also, former Ronald Reagan economic adviser Bruce Bartlett, who helped write Reagan’s tax cuts and literally wrote the book on Reaganomics, published an op-ed in the Washington Post on Thursday titled: “I helped create the GOP tax myth. Trump is wrong: Tax cuts don’t equal growth.” Bartlett said most Republican rhetoric about tax cutting is “wishful thinking.” “In reality,” Bartlett wrote, “there’s no evidence that a tax cut now would spur growth.”

1.) In order for Republicans to move any tax cut through Congress without ANY Democratic support, they would have to try to go through reconciliation, a budget process that would allow Senate Republicans to pass a bill with just 51 votes -- (Republicans control 52 seats in the chamber). The only caveat: The tax bill would not qualify for a simple majority vote if it adds to deficits beyond 10 years. Also, after 10 years, any tax cut passed through reconciliation automatically elapses and expires, unless it is specifically renewed at that time, in order words, it's only TEMPORARY anyway. (Think of the fight over Obama renewing the Bush tax cuts.) The current Republican proposal offers a significant corporate rate cut (in this case, from the current level of 35% to 20%, which House Republicans have proposed) for just three years which would result in deficit increase after 10 years. In other words, as it currently stands, it does NOT qualify for the reconciliation process.

2.) The alternative, is to pass tax cut legislation through REGULAR ORDER, which requires SIXTY ( 60 ) votes in the Senate in order to pass and be approved because of the filibuster rule, and therefore needs significant Democratic support. Mitch McConnell has already stated that he is opposed to and against doing away with the filibuster and the 60 vote requirement for regular legislation, because he knows once that happens, there is no going back and it would come back to bite Republicans whenever they lose their majority in the Senate again. However, Republicans did pull the trigger on the nuclear option with the Supreme Court nomination of Neil Gorsuch, so who knows?

The problem is that most Republicans have never actually worked to pass legislation during their time in Congress; they only know how to obstruct legislation from passing!

The House has a Speaker that entered Congress right when the GOP began their "Party of NO!" campaign against our country. Those Tea Party-poopers were elected running campaigns promising to never compromise on any issue, and they still believe that is how they should act in Congress.

History will not look back on this period of governing very fondly, I predict!

The problem is that most Republicans have never actually worked to pass legislation during their time in Congress; they only know how to obstruct legislation from passing!

The House has a Speaker that entered Congress right when the GOP began their "Party of NO!" campaign against our country. Those Tea Party-poopers were elected running campaigns promising to never compromise on any issue, and they still believe that is how they should act in Congress.

History will not look back on this period of governing very fondly, I predict!

"Aw, that trick never works!"

I like your Pollyannaish optimism. I would certainly feel more confident about the nation's future under its new permanent Republican majority if this Congress actually used its regular order and procedures to drive through one of its most cherished platform promises.