Who knows what’s going to shake from sieve as the Republican tax “reform” package lurches towards Bethlehem? Well, not me, for sure. I don’t know what kind of last-minute gimcracks and switcheroos old Paulie Ryan will pull out of his ass to paste together a bill that will get through the House, whether he will give up on some of his unpopular revenue enhancements, like eliminating the deductibility of state and local taxes, and tack on the repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s mandate to “balance” the mess, or try something else. I don’t know if the Senate will actually pass its own bill or take a dive as it did when attempting to “repeal” the ACA and simply go with the House bill for good or ill. I don’t know if the House and Senate will each pass its own bill and then “hammer” out a compromise, as they say, or if the Senate will capitulate to Paulie’s “genius” and go with the House bill, or whether the whole shebang will be still born, with either the House or Senate failing to pass anything. But I do know this: whatever happens, it will all be a sham.
It all be a sham because for the past eight years the Republicans, and the “Tea Party” in particular, did nothing but scream about “big government” and “big spending”. Back in 2011, when the Republicans won back control of the House, half of the Republican Party was literally willing to force the U.S. to default on its debt as a way of destroying the federal government’s credit. “We can’t spend money if no one will lend us any! It’s perfect!”
Well, that was so then. Now the Republicans are ready to boost the federal debt by an additional $150 billion over 10 years [Editor’s Note: Let’s make that $1.5 trillion, AV], claiming that we need to stimulate an economy with a 4% unemployment rate after arguing that the “cure” for an economy with a 10% unemployment rate was a balanced budget. And, in fact, the odds are pretty good—about a thousand to one, I would say—that any package that actually makes it through will cost a lot more than $150 billion.
The wonderful news from Virginia, with the Republicans not only losing every statewide race but also more than a dozen seats in the House of Delegates, only adds to the Republicans’ dismay. They can hear the ice cracking, but they can’t see the shore.
Afterwords
Both the Washington Post and Bloomberg provide suitably breathless updates, but unless you’re a lobbyist I don’t think you need to follow this too closely. Republicans will be under constant pressure to add carrots and remove sticks from a bill that is already a fraud from the get-go and a wet kiss to the Republican donor class. Whether it passes or not, it’s only going to get worse.
