Political Roundtable Part XIII

[AFM]

I phucking love Rand Paul no homo

[Wizardspride]

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[Wizardspride]

We shall see....

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[Wizardspride]

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[verbal8]

I doubt this will happen with Republicans running the government, but one change to the tax code that would make a lot of sense, would be to greatly reduce the number of people subject to federal income tax.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/13/high-income-americans-pay-most-income-taxes-but-enough-to-be-fair/
From 2014:

people with incomes of less than $50,000 accounted for 62.3% of all individual returns filed, but they paid just 5.7% of total taxes. Their average tax rate was 4.3%.

That means a 6% increase for those above 50K could make such a change revenue-neutral.

If it was applied all to those with incomes over 250K, it would be around a 10% increase in those taxes.

I don't think a flat tax will ever be reasonable, but I think if you move the brackets around correctly something like 0%/15%/30% could me much simpler and fairer without losing revenue. If you want to retain some deductions the numbers are probably 5 to 10% higher.

I think I agree with you - it seems like a mess to make those that make less than 50K file a return. But, on average, they get money back - so there is that.

It is estimated that someone making $250,000 per year pays ~ $100K in taxes when you include, federal income, federal payroll, state income, real estate, and other taxes. I assume you want that to go to $125K?

I meant a 10% increase in the federal rate - I think it would go from a little under 25% to around 27%.

I agree that work needs to be done on reducing spending. I think a more progressive tax code that was less of a hassle would actually provide an economic boost.

[DCZards]

I think changes to the tax code will happen, similar to the regulation "reform".
Some guesses:

pro-environment tax credits are likely to be removed.
removal the Head of Household status doesn't happen. I really hope this one doesn't happen, I can't think of a more precise way to target middle-class women and families.
corporate tax simplification - this could end up being a good thing or maybe just corporate welfare
tax cut for the rich - this seems to be the thing that unites republicans

One thing that could produce a reasonable tax code, would be to replace the whole individual tax code with a modified version of the AMT. On it's own the AMT doesn't collect enough money - so I think there has to be a lower rate tier added. It would have to implement less of a marriage penalty than the current version. The complexity of the AMT isn't in the system itself, but that it is added to the normal tax code.

There’s a growing dynamic that will make it difficult for Repubs to get the tax reform package they want.

Americans opposed to Trump's agenda mobilized and scared the sh*t out of some Repub congressman during the last round of town halls, which helped lead to the defeat of the repeal of Obamacare. Those folks are now even more emboldened now and will continue to fight Trump's and the Repubs' conservative agenda.

Meanwhile, Trump supporters have had little to cheer about. No Obamacare repeal. No wall paid for by Mexico. No Muslim ban. Instead, we have a weak and feckless president—with historically low approval ratings—who gets caught up in silly lie after lie, and whose top associates are under the dark cloud of an FBI investigation.

[pineappleheadindc]

Their own religious dedication to the Hastert rule screwed the Republicans. They need is to figure out what works for the 15-20 most conservative Democrats, then try that. It'll give House leadership a lot more breathing room in negotiating with the various factions of their own caucus.

[dckingsfan]

Their own religious dedication to the Hastert rule screwed the Republicans. They need is to figure out what works for the 15-20 most conservative Democrats, then try that. It'll give House leadership a lot more breathing room in negotiating with the various factions of their own caucus.

Yep, pretty hilarious watching the conservatives upend the Rs. They are still the opposition party

[dckingsfan]

I think changes to the tax code will happen, similar to the regulation "reform".
Some guesses:

pro-environment tax credits are likely to be removed.
removal the Head of Household status doesn't happen. I really hope this one doesn't happen, I can't think of a more precise way to target middle-class women and families.
corporate tax simplification - this could end up being a good thing or maybe just corporate welfare
tax cut for the rich - this seems to be the thing that unites republicans

One thing that could produce a reasonable tax code, would be to replace the whole individual tax code with a modified version of the AMT. On it's own the AMT doesn't collect enough money - so I think there has to be a lower rate tier added. It would have to implement less of a marriage penalty than the current version. The complexity of the AMT isn't in the system itself, but that it is added to the normal tax code.

There’s a growing dynamic that will make it difficult for Repubs to get the tax reform package they want.

Americans opposed to Trump's agenda mobilized and scared the sh*t out of some Repub congressman during the last round of town halls, which helped lead to the defeat of the repeal of Obamacare. Those folks are now even more emboldened now and will continue to fight Trump's and the Repubs' conservative agenda.

Meanwhile, Trump supporters have had little to cheer about. No Obamacare repeal. No wall paid for by Mexico. No Muslim ban. Instead, we have a weak and feckless president—with historically low approval ratings—who gets caught up in silly lie after lie, and whose top associates are under the dark cloud of an FBI investigation.

I think you are right Zards. I don't think they get anything through for a variety of reasons. It would be pretty funny if they go a full two years with no meaningful legislation - I could see it happening.

[Tricky_Kid]

Any news for removing Visa thing for Polish people?
New president who hired many polish workers in the past, years of promises from different presidents from Bush to Obama and nothing changed.
It is really slap in the face because Romanian people and other EU nations like Greeks, Chech can go to USA without any problems and our country is always dumb enough to stay by US side and have nothing in return. Any chance that Trump is changing this?

Sent from my HUAWEI CAM-L21 using RealGM mobile app

[dckingsfan]

In the meantime, Gorsuch is just killing it. Ds should just stop with the questioning and say that they are going to filibuster for political retribution. They are sounding between silly and ignorant for the most part. Some decent questions but not many.

The longer it goes, the worse they look.

[Wizardspride]

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[JWizmentality]

In the meantime, Gorsuch is just killing it. Ds should just stop with the questioning and say that they are going to filibuster for political retribution. They are sounding between silly and ignorant for the most part. Some decent questions but not many.

The longer it goes, the worse they look.

I suppose not answering the question and whimsical metaphors counts as "killin it" these days. Yes, he's doing tremendous. #winning.

[FAH1223]

I think changes to the tax code will happen, similar to the regulation "reform".
Some guesses:

pro-environment tax credits are likely to be removed.
removal the Head of Household status doesn't happen. I really hope this one doesn't happen, I can't think of a more precise way to target middle-class women and families.
corporate tax simplification - this could end up being a good thing or maybe just corporate welfare
tax cut for the rich - this seems to be the thing that unites republicans

One thing that could produce a reasonable tax code, would be to replace the whole individual tax code with a modified version of the AMT. On it's own the AMT doesn't collect enough money - so I think there has to be a lower rate tier added. It would have to implement less of a marriage penalty than the current version. The complexity of the AMT isn't in the system itself, but that it is added to the normal tax code.

There’s a growing dynamic that will make it difficult for Repubs to get the tax reform package they want.

Americans opposed to Trump's agenda mobilized and scared the sh*t out of some Repub congressman during the last round of town halls, which helped lead to the defeat of the repeal of Obamacare. Those folks are now even more emboldened now and will continue to fight Trump's and the Repubs' conservative agenda.

Meanwhile, Trump supporters have had little to cheer about. No Obamacare repeal. No wall paid for by Mexico. No Muslim ban. Instead, we have a weak and feckless president—with historically low approval ratings—who gets caught up in silly lie after lie, and whose top associates are under the dark cloud of an FBI investigation.

What really was driving the repeal—and why Ryan insisted it had to be done first (that was no duping of Trump, as some are claiming, nor was it Bannon setting up the Freedom Caucus, as some are even more fantastically claiming)—was the tax cuts: not only the massive tax cuts that the repeal contained within itself, but also, and more important, the permanent tax cuts that repeal would make possible down the road this year (in a way that George W. Bush's tax cuts were not permanent, much to the chagrin of the right). There was, in other words, a very rational reason to take on healthcare first; in some ways, given the ultimate long-term goals of the GOP (where cutting taxes has always proven to be the most tried and true method for keeping entitlement spending under control), they had no choice but to move on healthcare first. That was why, ultimately, I thought the repeal might pass: Ryan and Trump could make it clear to the Unfreedom Caucus that without repeal, they couldn't get permanent tax cuts. Now, if they want permanent tax cuts, they're going to have eliminate the Senate filibuster because they'd have to eliminate the Byrd Rule. Anyway, there's no way of slicing yesterday's defeat as anything other than a massive defeat for Trump, Ryan, and the entire GOP: not only on political grounds (I think people really underestimate how bad it is for a president to lose like this this early on; again, this is partially why Bannon worked so hard to get this bill passed) but also on substantive policy grounds.

Byrd Rule stipulates, among other things, that if legislation significantly increases the deficit beyond a 10-year-period, any senator can filibuster that legislation during the Reconciliation process. The GOP desperately wants to avoid that possibility because they want to avoid what they see as Bush's mistake: his massive tax cuts for the rich had a sunset provision of 10 years (b/c the GOP didn't have enough votes to stop a filibuster of that). So if the GOP could come up with various provisions like gutting Obamacare (which also included a massive tax cut, thereby lessening the amount they'd have to come up with the other tax cuts) and their border adjustment tax, they could show that on balance, the tax cuts they planned, over a 10-year period, would be revenue-neutral. It was a very complicated plan, and it's not clear it ever could have worked (the border adjustment tax is also controversial on the right), but gutting Obamacare was part of it, their only hope. Without that, they can still get tax cuts, but not permanent ones. Or they'd have to face the possibility of eliminating the filibuster, which is something people like McConnell and Orrin Hatch don't want.

[Wizardspride]

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[FAH1223]

But when Trump and co say that ObamaCare will blow up this year, they're apparently correct. I wonder how that fits with this reasoning on political strategy.

When the ACA was rolled out, telling insurance companies that they had to insure anybody who signed up, regardless of previous conditions or sickness, everybody realized that the insurance companies would probably lose money in the first decade or so, until previously-uninsured-but-sick people got into the system, got better, and things evened out.

To get the insurance companies to go along with this danger of losing money, the ACA promised to make them whole for any losses in any of the first decade’s years. At the end of each fiscal year, the insurance companies merely had to document their losses, and the government would reimburse them out of ACA funds provided for by the law.

The possibility of their losing money was referred to as the “risk corridor,” and the ACA explicitly filled those risk corridors with a guarantee of making the insurance companies, at the very least, whole.

And then something happened. As The New York Times noted on December 9, 2015, “A little-noticed health care provision slipped into a giant spending law last year has tangled up the Obama administration, sent tremors through health insurance markets and rattled confidence in the durability of President Obama’s signature health law.”

Rubio and a number of other Republicans had succeeded in gutting the risk corridors. The result was that, just in 2015, end-of-fiscal-year risk corridor payments to insurance companies that were supposed to total around $2.9 billion were only reimbursed, according to Rubio himself quoted in the Times, to the tune of around $400 million. Rubio bragged that he’d “saved taxpayers $2.5 billion.”

And, indeed, he had. But the insurance companies were thrown into a crisis. And, with Republicans in Congress absolutely refusing to re-fund the risk corridors, that crisis would get worse as time went on, at least over a period of a few years.

So the insurance companies did the only things they could. In (mostly red) states with low incomes and thus poorer health, they simply pulled out of the marketplace altogether. This has left some states with only one single insurer left. In others, they jacked up their prices to make up their losses.

As Robert Pear in the Times noted, Rubio’s “plan limiting how much the government can spend to protect insurance companies against financial losses has shown the effectiveness of quiet legislative sabotage.”

To add to the political psychodrama, the first hack by Rubio was maintained by Republicans into the 2016 budget, meaning that things got even worse in October, 2016 – the first month of the federal fiscal year when these cuts hit the worse, and, no coincidence, the month before the presidential election.

Rubio’s October Surprise was extraordinarily effective. October 2016 saw an explosion of stories in the news about how health insurance companies were either pulling out of ACA exchanges, or jacking their prices up wildly.

Time magazine wrote “8 States Where Obamacare Rates Are Rising by at Least 30%” without mentioning Rubio’s role in why. Ditto for NPR’s “22 Percent Hike in Obamacare Rates…” and CNN’s “Obamacare Premiums Soar By 22%.” If you date-limit just to October of 2016 – the month before the election – you can find hundreds of similar articles. It was a huge story, but somehow Little Marco’s role in it all – along with his friends in the GOP – never made it into any of the stories.

Only the Times, back the previous year, had really given much coverage to the story, noting, “[B]ecause of Mr. Rubio’s efforts, the administration says it will pay only 13 percent of what insurance companies were expecting to receive this year. The payments were supposed to help insurers cope with the risks they assumed when they decided to participate in the law’s new insurance marketplaces.”

Meanwhile, federal judge Thomas Wheeler of the US Court of Federal Claims, ruled recently (as reported last month by Forbes) that the feds actually have to pay back – to the tune of about $8 billion – the moneys lost by health insurance companies operationg in good faith.

But it’s way too late; dozens of nonprofits started to provide health insurance through the exchanges have already gone bankrupt, and the health insurance giants are both subsuming their smaller competitors and merging like there’s no tomorrow. Additionally, Wheeler’s ruling is certain to be appealed – meaning it’s in limbo for the moment.

So, yes, Donald Trump is right that Obamacare had been sabotaged, in a way that would virtually guarantee at least some level of crisis by 2017. Where he’s sadly, paranoiacly wrong is in attributing that sabotage to President Obama.

Democrats should have been screaming bloody murder for the past 2 years. Maybe they can start now, every time a reporter or Republican says, “Obamacare is failing…”

http://www.salon.com/2017/03/22/how-republicans-quietly-sabotaged-obamacare-long-before-trump-came-into-office_partner/#.WNV_PFAQt2Y.facebook

[AFM]

FAH did you read the article I posted a few pages back? It was Peter Schiff talking about Obamacare and the new replacement bill. It was an excellent read, and really spoke to why the new bill is complete ass.

[FAH1223]

FAH did you read the article I posted a few pages back? It was Peter Schiff talking about Obamacare and the new replacement bill. It was an excellent read, and really spoke to why the new bill is complete ass.

Can you re post it?

Schiff is an intense privatizer and free market guy so I expect him to shyt on it

[AFM]

FAH did you read the article I posted a few pages back? It was Peter Schiff talking about Obamacare and the new replacement bill. It was an excellent read, and really spoke to why the new bill is complete ass.

Can you re post it?

Schiff is an intense privatizer and free market guy so I expect him to shyt on it

Here you go

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-03-12/peter-schiff-talks-trumpcare-different-plan-same-problems

Peter Schiff made my family about 400k DURING the Great Recession by the way... dude is rarely wrong.

[dckingsfan]

In the meantime, Gorsuch is just killing it. Ds should just stop with the questioning and say that they are going to filibuster for political retribution. They are sounding between silly and ignorant for the most part. Some decent questions but not many.

The longer it goes, the worse they look.

I suppose not answering the question and whimsical metaphors counts as "killin it" these days. Yes, he's doing tremendous. #winning.

JWiz, he hasn't been obfuscating - lots of direct answers, the ones he can answer. You should listen. I went in thinking he wasn't that good - he is.

Looks like the Ds are planning to filibuster - and that is there right. But if they try to do it because of discrepancies in his testimony or other such issues - they will come out on the losing end.

They should make it clear that they are filibustering because the Rs blocked an equally good candidate in Garland.