While media focused on kavanaugh, the House GOP passed another $3.8 trillion taxcuts

[beachbum bob]

adding more to the deficits and debt, but really no chance of even being voted on in the Senate. Election year gimmick BUT democrats need to pounce on the GOP's drive to cut social security, medicare and medicaid to pay for bigger yachts for the rich






https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/28/house-passes-gop-bill-to-make-new-tax-cuts-permanent.html

[Chickensoup]

1. +1000

[Hortensis]

2. Thanks. Not good idea to turn our backs on these thieves,

regardless.

Btw, in another 2 months or so our next annual transfer payment on the $1.6 trillion we're giving the wealthy comes due.

[beachbum bob]

3. this why democratic candidates must use GOP taxcuts against them all the time...and its

working

[LenaBaby61]

6. "Democratic candidates must use GOP taxcuts against them all the time."

Night & Day, round the clock, and also bring up the MASSIVE deficits thuglicans are running up.

Dems BETTER, or else

[watoos]

4. The economy under Trump is booming because

he is running up a trillion dollar a year deficit. When his tariffs hurt farmers he just printed out money and reimbursed them. The complicit M$M enables this bs to happen. Imagine if a Democratic president had done this?

Yeah I see these new tax cuts reduce capital gains taxes even more which means even less revenue and more deficit. Whatever happened to Trump's campaign promise of reducing the deficit to zero in one year? It is ballooning to a trillion dollars a year.

[beachbum bob]

5. its the reason to CUT SS, Medicare and Medicaid, been the wet dream of conservatives since the

NEW DEAL DAYS

[LenaBaby61]

7. Massive Deficits It's the reason for thuglicans to CUT SS, Medicare and Medicaid.

Yep, drown the baby.

thuglican assholes 😒

[turbinetree]

8. These right wing assholes have been attacking society ever since .......................

Democracy in Chains
THE DEEP HISTORY OF THE RADICAL RIGHT’S STEALTH PLAN FOR AMERICA
By NANCY MACLEAN

ABOUT DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS
Winner of the Lillian Smith Book Award
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Finalist for the National Book Award
The Nation‘s “Most Valuable Book”

“[A] vibrant intellectual history of the radical right.”—The Atlantic

“This sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself is at the heart of Democracy in Chains. . . . If you’re worried about what all this means for America’s future, you should be.”—NPR

An explosive exposé of the right’s relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the Constitution.

Behind today’s headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect—the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan—and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority.

In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite’s power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us.

Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan’s work in teaching others how to divide America into “makers” and “takers.” And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, Charles Koch, discovered Buchanan, he created a vast, relentless, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan’s strategy.

Without Buchanan’s ideas and Koch’s money, the libertarian right would not have succeeded in its stealth takeover of the Republican Party as a delivery mechanism. Now, with Mike Pence as Vice President, the cause has a longtime loyalist in the White House, not to mention a phalanx of Republicans in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts, all carrying out the plan. That plan includes harsher laws to undermine unions, privatizing everything from schools to health care and Social Security, and keeping as many of us as possible from voting. Based on ten years of unique research, Democracy in Chains tells a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok. This revelatory work of scholarship is also a call to arms to protect the achievements of twentieth-century American self-government.

[dlk]

9. The GOP Will Not Stop their March toward Dismantling Our Democracy and Oligarchy

For their game plan, read Nancy McLean's well-researched book, "Democracy in Chains." It's all laid out in black and white.

[zentrum]

10. They've made us numb.

Each week presents a terrible Constitutional or moral crisis and is replaced by a new one one.
None of them are being dealt with effectively.

[N_E_1 for Tennis]

11. K&R

[BumRushDaShow]

12. "but really no chance of even being voted on in the Senate"

WHICH SHOULD BE THE BOTTOM LINE

Meaning this "story" is nothing but a showcase of yet another one of the House's "Squirrel!!!" moments, which are done to cause panic and distraction when in reality the actions are meaningless.

The point being - as long as the Senate D/R ratio is as close as it is, the bullshit that comes out of the House will never become law.

[beachbum bob]

13. this is true except when its not, hence the last taxcut that WAS approved by the senate

[BumRushDaShow]

14. Note that the last bill was done by RECONCILIATION

meaning that it did NOT require 60 votes to pass. This is how the ACA Pt. 2 got through when Democrats lost their 60 vote majority in the Senate in 2010. So that situation is not comparable to this one because use of "Reconciliation" is restricted to a max of 3 uses per year, meaning only once per each of those 3 eligible legislation types.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

17. Yes, but just wait. They always have a sinister motive.

They'll wave the flag of Democrat obstructionism all the way through mid-terms and beyond.

And, they will falsely claim the cuts were for the working class and small business....

[BumRushDaShow]

19. Well I literally just heard a business report on my local news radio station this morning

that said the IRS has started warning people that "they may be in for a big surprise" this coming tax season due to issues of tax-withholding - and notably that "retired" (likely voter) demographic who might not have had enough being withheld this past year. Meaning they may get hit with a huge "out of pocket" tax DUE when they file their 2018 returns.

So I don't think trying again is going to work because basically, this second go-around is only supposed to be making the current tax giveaway, "permanent" for the little guy, which had already been the default for the billionaires. So if passed, there won't be any immediate impact or change in their current rates after 2025 when the current tax breaks were set to expire.

You also still have the issue of the lack of state/local tax deductions for high-tax states (and some of those states have goodly numbers of Republicans like CT, NY, and NJ), so they are already swimming against some huge waves.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

20. Thanks for sharing that info, and good point about the state taxes.

Regarding the IRS, they may have been referring to this:

Retirees: Avoid a surprise tax bill; get enough tax taken out of pension payments; IRS Withholding Calculator can help
IR-2018-180, Sept. 7, 2018

Link: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/retirees-avoid-a-surprise-tax-bill-get-enough-tax-taken-out-of-pension-payments-irs-withholding-calculator-can-help

(snips)

This is the second in a series of four news releases aimed at helping taxpayers pay the right amount of tax and avoid an estimated tax penalty. During this series, the IRS is highlighting resources and tools available to taxpayers to help avoid a surprise at tax time. This is part of the Paycheck Checkup campaign to encourage people to check their tax situation as soon as possible.
-----
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, enacted in December 2017, changed the way tax is calculated for most taxpayers including retirees. Among other reforms, the new law changed the tax rates and brackets, increased the standard deduction, removed personal exemptions and limited or discontinued certain deductions. As a result, many taxpayers may need to raise or lower the amount of tax they pay in during the year.

I'm sure when they speak of a "surprise" tax bill, they are not referring to a refund, yet they have the arrogance to still call it the "Tax Cuts" bill.

A more accurate descriptor would be the "American Wealth Upward Redistribution Bill".......

[BumRushDaShow]

21. Yes and what you posted

would be for getting the withholding straight for 2019 in order to not get socked in 2020 when the 2019 taxes are filed. Whatever was taken out and possibly gummed up with this year's withholding, may give some a shock however when the 2018 tax year filing is worked on.

I am a retiree but worked for the federal government and OPM did supposedly change my withholding to be close to what it should be (I usually took out the max) but I'll find out soon enough when I get my 1099-R.

[paleotn]

15. DOA in the Senate.

[Ilsa]

16. I wouldn't fight for the US if they succeeded in creating a rightwing nirvana.

Why should soldiers fight to protect a system that keeps 90% of the people suppressed, poor, undernourished, undereducated, without access to healthcare?

[SansACause]

18. Something's odd about this story.

From the link: "Friday's vote was 22-191..." First, that would indicate it was voted down. Second, where were the other 222 members? Maybe it was supposed to be 222-191?

[BumRushDaShow]

22. Yes - that is a "lack of hiring an editor" problem

Here is the vote count (220 - 191) and roll call -

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2018/roll414.xml

And the legislation itself -

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/6760

There were 3 Democrats who voted for it (Lamb, Rosen, Sinema) and 10 Republicans who voted against it (Donovan, Faso, Frelinghuysen, King (NY), Lance, LoBiondo, Rohrabacher, Smith (NJ), Stefanik, Zeldin).

I'm sortof shocked at Rohrabacher because maybe his will be a take-able seat then (if Mueller don't get him first).

[joshcryer]

23. But Obama proposed chained CPI.

Which would've brought 8 million seniors out of poverty.