It is likely that Republicans in Congress will pass something resembling House Speaker Paul Ryan’s tax package—because if they don’t they’ll look like complete fools, and they’d rather fuck up the country than look like that.
It’s “amusing” that everyone, even me, has pointed to the massive Republican hypocrisy of having spent eight long years denouncing Democratic profligacy during the Obama Administration, and the goddamned absolute need to cut spending now! only to decide once in power that they’re not going to cut a goddamned thing, that they’re going to, in fact, increase spending on defense and maybe a few other things, while passing out enough tax cuts to the rich to knock a $150 billion hole in the budget each year—and maybe more—by pretending to sunset some of the cuts (the ones for the little people) while hoping to create enough pressure on future Congresses to force them to take the heat for blowing another gaping fiscal hole in America’s economic hide.
Yes, we should recognize this, but we should also recognize that Paul Ryan, “Lyin’ Paulie Ryan”, as I like to call him, is, well, the biggest liar of them all. Back in the early days of the Obama Administration, Ryan was making a name for himself as an earnest policy wonk who just wanted to, you know, cut that doggone gummint spending and balance that doggone budget, doggone it.
To get on the good side of the Tea Party crowd, who were pretending that they hated all that spending under George Bush (though they never bothered to vote to cut it), Paulie had to do some quick footwork to “explain” why he had voted for, you know, all of it, footwork that the lamestream media was all too quick to applaud. “Explained” Ryan Lizza in the New Yorker “Like many young conservatives, he [Ryan] is embarrassed by the Bush years. At the time, as a junior member with little clout, Ryan was a reliable Republican vote for policies that were key in causing enormous federal budget deficits ….”
Yeah, but that was cloutless Paulie. By 2012, Ryan, “tall, wiry, with a puff of wavy dark hair” as Lizza worshipfully described him, had turned his back on all that embarrassing profligacy. But, now, it seems, not so much.
Afterwords
A team of nine Republican economists have written a letter claiming that cutting the corporate tax rate, coupled with the other main provisions of the bill should stimulate economic growth by an extra 3 or 4 percent over 10 years, the only problem being that the “plan” they’re describing exists only in their minds, not in the halls of Congress. As New York Times columnist David Leonhardt explains, the fantasy bill is revenue neutral, rather than $1.5 trillion not neutral, like the real bill. Unsurprisingly, studies put together by non-Republican economists, like this one from the National Bureau of Economic Research, conclude that cutting the corporate tax rate during times of low unemployment won’t have much effect on the economy. And there’s “street” evidence, so to speak, to back that up—for example, when the Wall Street Journal held a little get together last week for Gary Cohn, head of President Trump’s council of economic advisors, and a select group of CEOs, a Journal editor asked the crowd for a show of hands for those who planned to increase capital expenditures once the GOP’s proposed cuts became law—most of them sat on their hands. Gee, do you think CEOs know something Republican economists don’t?
