Tag: Tax Cuts

The Promise Of Wages

I follow Speaker Ryan on Twitter because his daily Tweets can get a real person laughing for most of the day.  His Tweets since the tax cuts of 2017 are about how much better off the economy is at this point and occasionally he offers some vague promise of wages.

The truth is these cuts have done little to raise the wages of the working class but did everything to raise the wealth of the already wealthy.

The real truth is that all the tax cuts for the last couple of decades have done nothing to raise the wages of the average working stiff.

The graph on wages is flat and has been that way for many decades……follow the graphs on wages……there are 9 of them that prove my point…..https://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/

After checking out the graphs……read this report from the Pew Research……

On the face of it, these should be heady times for American workers. U.S. unemployment is as low as it’s been in nearly two decades (3.9% as of July) and the nation’s private-sector employers have been adding jobs for 101 straight months – 19.5 million since the Great Recession-related cuts finally abated in early 2010, and 1.5 million just since the beginning of the year.

But despite the strong labor market, wage growth has lagged economists’ expectations. In fact, despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

So to taunt the tax cuts as working for the working class is a damn lie….a lie that the GOP has become master at selling to the unwitting public.

To fight this growing story…the public is starting to see just how much of a lie the GOP is spreading…..the Right needs a theory to explain the lagging wages…..

Once upon time, when the GOP was still attempting to dress itself up as a party of ideas, Yuval Levin was considered one of its star intellectuals. As editor of the conservative policy journal National Affairs, he was a wonkish prophet of fiscal doom, who argued that the U.S. would soon face a reckoning over its national debt, and that the only way to avert catastrophe was to radically curtail the modern welfare state. Levin was once described as Paul Ryan’s own “personal philosopher,” and was the sort of guy who could get David Brooks hot and bothered by writing a long-winded argument for slashing entitlement spending.

If a politician like Sen. Marco Rubio or Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had become president in 2016, Levin might still be playing a starring role in Washington’s policy discourse. But of course, Donald Trump is president, and Republicans have dropped the charade that they sincerely care about the deficit, or whatever the heck got written about in ponderous thinky policy rags. Levin still gets cited by columnists like Brooks, but his star is a bit fallen.

https://slate.com/business/2018/09/wage-stagnation-new-conservative-theory.html

An interesting read and very eye opening……

The GOP has always been a party for liars and when it comes to screwing the public they are masters at making the public smile while getting humped.

It’s The Economy Stupid! (Again)

Labor Day (that was yesterday) got off to a rousing start with a Tweet from Our Dear Leader…..Trump then touted the economy, tweeting, “Happy Labor Day! Our country is doing better than ever before with unemployment setting record lows.”

I have looked at the economy from several different political points of view……https://lobotero.com/2010/06/28/its-the-economy-stupid/

Dear Leader and the his enabling cowards, the GOP, keep thumping their chests like sex crazed primates over the economy and it is just silly…..maybe it works for a few individuals but nit so much for the country…..

Wages are falling, Wall Street tycoons are swimming in profits from stock buybacks, and the federal deficit is exploding. Every way you slice it, the Republican tax scam is failing spectacularly, falling far short of the blustering promises of Trump, Speaker Paul Ryan, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

When Republicans jammed through the tax scam on a party-line vote, Trump promised it would be “rocket fuel” for the economy, helping families across the nation. Ryan promised tax cuts for everyone. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin vowed the bill would pay for itself.

All lies.

https://shareblue.com/republican-tax-scam-busted-doesnt-promised/

We can keep lying to the people and it will come back and bite someone in the ass….most times the working class are the ones that get bitten while the 1% enjoy the high life.

Closing Thought–14Aug18

Recently the Congress and Our Dear Leader passed and signed into law the large tax cuts for the rich……and now they are talking about another round of tax cuts for those same rich people……

And what if the “Blue Wave” is successful……will the tale told by Dear Leader about the raising of taxes come true?

Whatever happened to the notion that rich people should pay their fair share of the cost for their country’s public programs?

Progressive income taxes―designed to fund government services and facilities—go back centuries, and are based on the idea that taxes should be levied most heavily on people with the ability to pay them.  In the United States, the federal government introduced its first income tax in 1861, to cover the costs of the Civil War. Although new federal income tax legislation in the 1890s was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, the resulting public controversy led, in 1913, to passage of the sixteenth amendment to the Constitution, firmly establishing the legality of an income tax.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/01/lets-tax-the-rich/

Personally I have NO problem with everyone paying the same amount of taxes or the elimination of some of the beneficial deductions of the wealthy…..not to worry these people will pay the taxes and still find a way to turn a profit……then let us do the right thing and we all pay the same amount of taxes….so yeah…tax the goddamn rich!

I have given my solutions for true tax reform and not just a few tax cuts….unlike most bloggers I do not just bitch about something I also offer what I think is a better plan…..(please check out my solutions and see if they are not a better way to tax the people)

https://gulfsouthfreepress.wordpress.com/2017/09/01/tax-reform-2017-edition/

After all there is still “Taxation Without Representation”…….and I have written about this situation as well……https://lobotero.com/2011/05/12/no-taxation-without-representation/

So I Have Written!

Turn The Page!

The People’s Budget

First those tax cuts that the GOP shoved down the throat of Congress….well these do very little for a peon like me about $35 a month and did everything it was suppose to do…make the wealthy more so and explode the deficit (so much for all GOP crap about fiscal responsibility)…..

Well it was so successful for the wealthy that they are planning another round of help for the Fat Cats……

Despite the profound unpopularity of the Republican Party’s tax law, pushed through last December amid loud protests directed at President Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers, party leaders on Tuesday unveiled framework for their “tax cuts 2.0” package—signaling that they are doubling down on their plans to benefit the rich at the expense of working Americans.

The framework, which House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Texas) released, claims that it would permanently extend tax cuts for individuals that were set to expire in 2025, help families to save for college, and help small businesses create retirement plans for their workers.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/24/no-evidence-goptaxscam-has-benefited-most-americans-republicans-unveil-plan-double

A subject that gets little attention these days……poverty.  These days it seems the being poor makes one a criminal and most legislation rewards greed and wealth…..

In addition to padding the bottom lines of America’s largest corporations by cutting their taxes and eliminating scores of longstanding regulations, President Donald Trump is also protecting major companies’ profits by refusing to punish them for ripping off consumers and trampling federal rules that safeguard the planet.

That is the central conclusion of a new Public Citizen analysis out Wednesday, which finds that corporate America has largely been exempt from Trump’s so-called “law-and-order” agenda. Titled Corporate Impunity (pdf), the report shows that enforcement actions carried out by major government agencies declined drastically during Trump’s first year in the White House.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/25/poverty-criminalized-wealth-immunized-report-shows-corporate-crime-enforcement-has

I brought up this expansion of the deficit because that Progressive Caucus has released the “People’s Budget”…….

Offering an ambitious alternative to the House GOP’s “morally bankrupt” 2019 budget proposal—which demands over $5 trillion in cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and other life-saving programs—the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) on Tuesday unveiled a budget that calls for massive investments in infrastructure, healthcare, and education while proposing significant cuts to the completely “out-of-control” Pentagon budget.

Titled The People‘s Budget: A Progressive Path Forward (pdf), the CPC’s plan also calls for a ban on “any expansion of U.S. combat troops in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, and many other countries,” demanding an immediate end to “the policy of funding endless wars.”

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2018/07/24/putting-common-good-over-billionaires-and-war-profiteers-house-progressives-unveil

This addresses the “Common Good” which any legislation should do…..

Now in reality this “Budget” will go nowhere….simply because it does little to benefit those that own the members of Congress.

Economic News

It is Saturday and I need to report on stuff that is happening and the MSM seems to avoid their inclusion in the daily news reports.

Remember those tax cuts last year and all the promises for the future?  Well here is some news that the GOP does not want the rest of the population to know…..

One of the many things confirmed by the great tax-bill melodrama of 2017 is that Republicans only pretend to care about “fiscal responsibility” when Democrats are in power and tax cuts aren’t on the line. With the opportunity to slash the corporate rate nearly in half, cries of “I won’t endorse a bill that adds one penny to the deficit!” evaporated, and tacking on $1.5 trillion became no big deal. Tax cuts, we will soon be reminded, don’t grow on trees, and the social safety net must be pared back in exchange. For now, though, Republicans are still in the trickle-down honeymoon phase, seeing in every corporate press release more confirmation that America has been made great again. Which makes it somewhat ironic that the Treasury is now burning through its cash reserves at an even more spectacular rate.

the CBO does not agree with the GOP bullshit……

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the federal government will run out of money even sooner than expected, thanks to the new tax legislation, which is estimated to lead to a fall in revenue of $136 billion in 2018. A default on debts had originally been forecasted for late March or early April. But now, because of the new withholding tables, “withheld receipts are expected to be less than the amounts paid in the comparable period last year.” That, combined with the fact that the Treasury generally issues a high number of tax refunds in February and March, means that the $272 billion in cash the Department had on hand as of Tuesday will quickly dwindle. If the debt ceiling isn’t increased by the first half of March, the C.B.O. cautioned on Wednesday, “the government would be unable to pay its obligations fully,” and would be forced to delay payments, default on its debts, or both.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/02/the-gop-tax-cut-is-draining-the-treasury

Why is it when the GOP does something economic the reserves suffer the worst?  And does no one call them on their bullshit?  Then they are the ones that bitch about the deficit the loudest and instead of responsible spending they want to make up the short fall by screwing the rest of the population?

One more news item and it is one that no one wants to hear…..recession…….

When will the US enter its next recession? Economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal are predicting 2020. We’re currently in an economic expansion that started in mid-2009—the second-longest in American history—and 59% of the forecasters surveyed think it is most likely to end in two years due to the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. Another 22% predicted 2021; smaller groups predicted 2019, 2022, or an unspecified date beyond that.

Recessions are difficult to predict, but one economist who took part in the survey says signs are emerging that the current expansion is in the late stages of its cycle, and another says “any year from 2019 onward is in play” for a recession. The last recession began in December 2007; alarms were raised in 2011 and 2016, but the US did not enter a recession either time. The longest-ever economic expansion was in the 1990s, lasting 10 years.

Just FYI so that my readers can make any adjustments that they may need…..

Sorry if I peed on your parade….Have a good day and get some rest!  chuq

Closing Thought–08Jan18

Those darn pesky facts

Trump recently signed a tax cut bill and several companies showed  their appreciation by giving its workers a bonus or a raise……and Trump had to proclaim these companies as forward looking and a credit to his “America First” agenda……but as usual Trump is a bullshit artist….

Companies like ComCast and AT&T were held up by Trump….well let’s look at the crap…..some are laying off workers…….but the tax bill saved them cash and they want to keep it…..

Comcast and AT&T were among the businesses that claimed Republican lawmakers’ effort to restructure the tax code in favor of wealthy corporations would allow them to be more generous to their workers, and publicly announced $1,000 year-end bonuses for their employees. The CEOs of both companies specifically cited the tax bill in separate press releases touting these “special” bonuses.

https://thinkprogress.org/companies-gop-tax-bonuses-layoffs-fdf07fdf90d2/

As usual the reality never gets reported for if they do then they are labeled “Fake News” by our mental deficient president…..somehow Obama will get the blame…..

My writing is getting old for the day….I will shut it down and rest for tomorrow’s stuff….chuq

The Speaker Speaks–Dec. 2017

Some may say that I am a prick.  And they are probably right.  Why would I say this?

The tax bill that passed in Dec 2017 is nothing but a boost for the wealthy….the middle class gets a boost for a couple of years then it disappears but the wealthy gets to keep all their benefits….it will create jobs…horseshit!

All that aside….I have the Speakers words and his promises on vid and in print and I will be sure to play this for the conservs whenever they try to run in my district…..

https://www.speaker.gov/press-release/speaker-ryans-floor-remarks-tax-cuts-and-jobs-act

The “Swamp” just got richer…..

The Tax Vote

The GOP has NO shame….how can they stand before the nation and lie and lie and lie……

Can we move the f*ck on?

Did you hear the Speaker go on and on….all of it lies….tax reform did not happen tax cuts for the wealthy did…..they stole the future and did not need a weapon to do so…..

Most Americans do not understand a word of economics why else do you think they can lie and get away with it…..but Vox has made it simple for everyone to understand the whole picture……a  fellow blogger Gronda Morin posted it on his site and I wanted to let my readers see what the truth of the matter…….

VOX Graphs To Explain Economy/ US Congress Needs To Learn the Basics

If you study the graphs it makes it painfully clear just how bad the f*cking of the American people will be…..this bill does NOTHING to change any of the math…..

The GOP has been foaming at the mouth since January to do what they have wanted to do to the American people for 30 years.

After all the glowing promises of the GOP…..after all the talking points were spread around…….

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/12/19/house-and-senate-vote-heres-13-worst-things-trump-gop-tax-scam

OOPS!…….. they’ll have to do it again on Wednesday because of a legislative hiccup. Tuesday’s vote, largely along party lines, was 227-203 and capped a GOP sprint to deliver a major legislative accomplishment to President Trump. In a last-minute glitch, however, the Senate parliamentarian ruled that three provisions in the bill, including one that would allow parents to use college savings accounts for home-schooling expenses for young children, violate Senate budget rules. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said the House would vote on the package again on Wednesday, after the Senate removes the problematic provisions and passes the bill, per the AP.

Next year they will come for everyone’s Social Security and Medicare…..wait for it.

Don’t Panic Just Yet

The word has been that the Senate has doomed the middle class to lower wages and high taxes in the future….I even fell into the hype around the Senate vote….but foresight has finally come to me….the House has their bill and now the Senate has theirs….and now the two must come together for a final bill 6to be sent to the president for his signature.

How do the two bills compare?

The Senate passed a nearly $1.5 trillion tax overhaul early Saturday after some late changes were made to the bill. The House passed a nearly $1.5 trillion tax bill two weeks ago that differs in key respects, and the two chambers will have to craft a compromise to send to President Trump, the AP reports. A comparison of the two Republican-written measures:

  • Personal income tax rates: The Senate bill retains the current number of brackets, seven, but changes them to 10, 12, 22, 24, 32, 35, and 38.5%. Under current law, the top bracket for wealthiest earners is 39.6%. The House measure condenses seven brackets to four: 12, 25, 35, and 39.6%. Under the Senate bill, the reductions in personal income tax rates are temporary, ending in 2026. They’re permanent in the House bill.
  • Individual insurance mandate. The Senate bill repeals the ObamaCare requirement that people pay a tax penalty if they don’t purchase health insurance. The House bill does not.
  • Personal exemption. Both bills eliminate the current $4,050 personal exemption.
  • Inheritance tax. Currently, when someone dies the estate owes taxes on the value of assets transferred to heirs above $5.5 million for individuals, $11 million for couples. The Senate bill doubles those limits but does not repeal the tax. The House initially doubles the limits and then repeals the entire tax after 2023.
  • Tax credits.:The Senate doubles per-child tax credit to $2,000. The House raises per-child tax credit from $1,000 to $1,600 and extends it to families earning up to $230,000. The House bill also creates a $300 tax credit for each adult in a family, which expires in 2023. Both bills preserve the adoption tax credit.
  • Standard deduction. Used by about 70% of US taxpayers, currently $6,350 for individuals and $12,700 for married couples. The Senate and House bills both double those levels to $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for couples.
  • Corporate taxes: The Senate and House bills both cut the current 35% rate to 20%, but the Senate has a one-year delay in dropping the rate.
  • Alternative minimum tax. The AMT is aimed at ensuring that higher-earning people pay at least some tax. The Senate bill doesn’t repeal it but reduces the number of people who have to pay it. The House measure repeals the tax.

Pass-through businesses: Millions of US businesses “pass through” their income to individuals, who then pay personal income tax on those earnings, not corporate tax. The Senate bill lets people deduct 23% of the earnings and then pay at their personal income tax rate on the remainder. The House measure taxes many of the pass-through businesses at 25%, plus creates a 9% rate for the first $75,000 in earnings for some smaller pass-throughs.

So I would like to tell my readers that many bills have made it this far and failed…..we can only hope that this is one of those bills.

Sadly I am one of those people that does not look for this bill to fail….

Merry Christmas Suckers!

GOP is smiling with joy for they made their rich clients happy this holiday season….

For a couple weeks now the GOP has been running around to try and get the votes that need to shove a tax plan up the butts of most Americans……even Fearless Fosdick has been telling  his adoring mobs what a good deal this bill will be for most of us (will explain that pile of manure a little later in this post)…..even the so-called “mavericks of Flake, Collins, Graham and McCain have decided that party politics is more important than the people they serve…..who am I kidding?  They serve their rich masters.

“We have the votes.” So declared Mitch McConnell Friday on the GOP’s bid to push a $1.4 trillion tax bill through the Senate. The final vote in the chamber is expected to come later Friday. The Senate majority leader’s comment came soon after the No. 2 Senate GOP leader, John Cornyn of Texas, said the same, per the AP. With the party controlling the Senate 52-48 and Democrats uniformly opposed, Republicans need 50 votes to win approval; VP Pence would break a tie. The measure’s momentum was boosted Friday when Sen. Ron Johnson said he’d vote for it after leaders agreed to his demand to make tax breaks more generous for millions of businesses. Sen. Steve Daines also backed the legislation after winning an increase in the business income deduction from 17.4% to 20%.

The bill seemed to be sailing toward passage Thursday, until a report out of the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the package would produce budget deficits totaling $1 trillion over the next 10 years. Advocates say the measure’s tax cuts will spark enough economic growth to pay for the lowered levies. The projection left the votes of several GOP senators in doubt, including Tennessee’s Bob Corker and Arizona’s Jeff Flake; Maine’s Susan Collins is also up in the air. Cornyn said leaders are still working on any holdouts. Senate passage would push Congress a step closer to the first rewrite of the nation’s tax code in 31 years. Unlike the House tax bill recently passed, the Senate measure would end the Obama requirement that people pay a tax penalty if they don’t buy health insurance.

Of course the boot lickers of Fearless Fosdick will be in awe of this bill and all it does for us mere mortals but most of it is fracking lies!

As Senate Republicans proclaimed on Friday that they have the votes to pass a $1.5 trillion tax bill whose contents have been kept secret from virtually everyone except corporate lobbyists, progressive lawmakers and activists are once more warning that the GOP is planning to use the massive deficit hole its plan would create to justify taking a sledgehammer to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security—a ploy one group has termed the “tax two-step.”

Indivisible released a video explaining the tactic, which has been utilized by Republicans for decades—but which might now be deployed on a scale never seen.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/12/01/gop-tax-scam-two-step-explode-deficit-cuts-rich-then-screw-poor

Forget campaign promises and White House propaganda about prosperity via tax cuts. The GOP is poised to show every American who isn’t wealthy that it couldn’t care less about their daily economic struggles.

That message comes in the $1.5 trillion tax bill that is on the verge of Senate passage, following a slightly different version the House passed a few weeks ago. Fiscally, the legislation gives temporary minimal tax cuts to the middle-class—on the order of 1 percent or so—while giving increasingly larger and permanent cuts to corporations and wealthy Americans, whose financial portfolios are not commonplace.

https://www.alternet.org/economy/gop-tax-plan-giant-middle-finger-hundreds-millions-americans

Oh there is so much more……

Republicans plan to pass a bill this week to allow churches to engage in political activity. And they plan to pass a bill that limits state spending on education. And a bill that caps state health care. And a bill that cripples public transportation. And a bill that will end the individual mandate on healthcare and drive up insurance prices. And a bill that would halt abortions.

And, incidentally, they plan to pass a bill that gifts trillions to millionaires and corporations while driving up both costs and taxes for the working and middle class. Because all of this, and more, is rolled into the Republican “tax bill.”

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/monstrous-details-republican-tax-plan-trump-doesnt-want-you-know-about

And there is the endless use of the term “trigger” when this bill is talked about….would you like to know what that is all about?  Good.  ‘Cause here it is……

As Senate Republicans barrel toward a tax vote, lawmakers worried about the national debt are in search of some kind of last-minute fix — except no one knows what that fix will be.

The idea is still in a conceptual stage: If the rosy deficit forecasts from this tax bill prove to be inaccurate, and the economy does not grow as fast as Republican leaders are saying it will, then they want a trigger mechanism in place to in some way address that.

Matt Yglesias explained how that would work in theory, but “in practice, the economic impact of some kind of backstop provision is going to hinge on the implementation details.” Those details are far from final.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/30/16716860/senate-tax-bill-deficit-trigger

Now they will hammer out the final bill between the two houses….God only knows how much more screwing will come out of that session.

But this should tell you all you need to know about your new “tax cut” bill……

Republicans have already made few bones about the fact that this bill was basically a payoff to their wealthy donors, but Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley took things to another level when he openly displayed the contempt for ordinary Americans that is the beating heart of his party’s politics.

In an interview with the Des Moines Register, Grassley said that people who “invest” are more deserving of tax cuts because they don’t waste their money on frivolities:

“I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing,” Grassley said, “as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

Congrats!  If this is signed into law, and it will, then the Congress has just fucked the entire nation that has to work for a living….this will go down as one of the biggest rip-offs in American history.

And YOU VOTED for it…..now live with it!