Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Congress ends the year with a solid achievement - and it's on its signature issue

There's one more hoop to jump through after the Senate's passing of what has turned out to be a pretty darn nice tax bill.  Due to an arcane procedural glitch, the House has to vote on it again, which may be taking place as I write this. Then it's off to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue for a presidential signature.

Over 80 percent of US taxpayers will see that they are keeping more of their own money. Corporations get to keep a lot more of their own money. Positive economic effects will manifest themselves in short order.

Of course, the Freedom-Haters are howling in existential anguish. That may make for a post unto itself, but I don't want to make it the main point here, other than to reiterate the basic truth that needs to be the first rejoinder whenever they start in with their statist rhetoric: The money belongs to individual citizens and various private organizations, not the government.

And there is still the issue of the $20 trillion-plus debt, which cannot be solved without making major changes to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

But freedom and prosperity are getting a major boost, and that's a fine thing.

12 comments:

  1. People are howling because the way this was enacted is no better and likely worse than the ACA was wrought on the American people. No Dem votes in favor and they were virtually excluded from the process. Don't you smell it?

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  2. There is a very good chance that your ilk will be voted so far out of the power to "reform" already constitutionally vetted social insurance legislation too. Let the campaign 2018 begin..,,

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  3. So we shall have the debate in 2018 when the voters will vote on your ilk's fate.

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  4. Cuts taxes a little bit for a little while for the Middle Class. Corps? Cuts taxes a lot. Forever. Or so they say.

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  5. Well, whichever party is in power when the middle class tax cuts are set to expire is not likely to take the position, "It's time to raise your tax rates again now."

    I hope you're not correct about being voted that far our of power, but if so, we'll just be that much further in debt and closer to the day of reckoning.

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  6. So you say. Good luck with your contended principles thing when it slams smack dab into the dictates of constitutionally tried and true democracy (social insurance).

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  7. Not only is it an allegedly solid achievement it's the only achievement of this year's Congress which was as viciously partisan as ever.

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  8. Well, Freedom-Haters are welcome to get on board, but none seem to want to. They'd rather demagogue about what Republicans aim to do.

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  9. My take is that they wanted more information and more debate on this legislation. They say the Pubs didn't even try to grease em before inserting the shaft. Oh well, tit for tat and all that. I never bought that your side had such an unprecedented mandate and now it looks like the pendulum will be swinging the other way within one short year if the very pissed and disenfranchised Dems get their vote out for the mid terms.

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  10. 97 percent of Democrats - certainly generally, and also in Congress - don't think a person's money is really his or hers. They think it belongs to the government and gets parceled out to citizens at the whim of government.

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  11. Chris Christie thinks they should stay the final vote too

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  12. Ah, yes, there's a real principled conservative!

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