im sorry why the forget did this tax bill pass
Well, forget. Kudos to Bob Corker, though I'm a little miffed that Flake and McCain voted yes. I don't expect Congressmen to agree with me on everything, but before the vote, Flake loved to talk about fiscal responsibility and debt, and expressed those concerns about the tax plan. Those concerns haven't really been addressed, and he voted yes anyway. McCain has previously seemed to stand for proper process, deliberation, and bipartisan discussion (which is why he did not vote to repeal APA). Parts of the bill were
literally handwritten in the margins, only hours before the vote. Yet McCain voted yes.
Both of my Senators have failed us. They have failed progressives, liberals, and fiscal conservatives, of course, but more importantly, they betrayed their core principles.
https://twitter.com/SenatorDurbin/status/936738041087037440"Trying to review the #GOPTaxScam but they are making hand-written changes to brand new text as we speak – can anyone else read this?"
"They are scribbling changes in the margins. What could possibly go wrong."
https://twitter.com/clairecmc/status/936678750577623041"This is so bad. We have just gotten list of amendments to be included in bill NOT from our R colleagues, but from lobbyists downtown. None of us have seen this list, but lobbyists have it. Need I say more? Disgusting. And we probably will not even be given time to read them."
https://twitter.com/SenatorTester/status/936748480000921600"I was just handed a 479-page tax bill a few hours before the vote."
Regardless of your opinion on the tax bill,
this should be extremely alarming to you. This bill was passed in an extremely rough state, with changes quite literally scribbled on, and Senators weren't even given enough time to actually
read the bill. Forget bipartisan support - apparently the GOP thinks it's totally acceptable to completely exclude Democrats from even reading the bills they're pushing through.
In addition to the alarming way the bill was passed, it's also
very unpopular among voters (14% difference between yes and no), which doesn't quite scream "democratic representation" to me. Unpopular policies can be justified if they are predicted to actually benefit society, but that's far from true on this tax plan. The plan would have a mostly negligible effect on economic output
(only 0.2% after 20 years), and inflate the deficit that conservatives hate so much by
$1 trillion over the first decade,
after accounting for the predicted increase in growth. (Keep in mind that increased debt has other negative effects on the economy, especially via the interest rate.) It would all be worth it, though, if it gave income to Americans, right? But it doesn't. The plan doesn't offer significant decreases in taxes on the lower or middle class, and offers a huge windfall to the wealthy (again, without giving much in growth). Finally, the plan allows the federal government to more easily double-tax income already taxed by states.
The net effect is that the GOP is essentially punishing blue states and rewarding red states for their loyalty to the GOP.
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