Republican Tax Scam Is Either Evil Or Dumb, Maybe Both!
By Thom Hartmann A...
Interesting article in the Washington Post by James Hohmann, Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve: "Tension over adding 'triggers' to the tax bill highlights the Republican identity crisis over deficits".
I have to explain this to you because it is so nonsensical, and the media is doing an absolutely terrible job of even describing - much less explaining - what Bob Corker is up to. And yet you need to understand this because it exposes the Republican tax scam brilliantly and Corker doesn't even realize it.
So, first of all, let's step back and just set aside for a moment the whole Republican tax scam and just talk for a second about macroeconomic policy during times of boom and bust, okay, the large economic policies of a nation as that nation goes through the regular cycles the capitalism brings us, typically a six, seven, eight year cycle of boom and bust.
You have booms and then you have bust and then boom and then bust and then roughly every 80 years that cycle goes totally insane and becomes insanely toxic and you have a huge bust after a huge boom.
So typically the conventional wisdom - and it's conventional wisdom because it's been demonstrated to work over literally hundreds and hundreds of years - is that when the economy is really doing well, when you've got unemployment below five percent, which is right now, when you've got corporate profits at an all-time historic high, higher than ever in the history of the world, which is now, when you've got rich people making more money than rich people have ever made before in the history of Earth, which is now, when you've got those conditions - corporations are awash in cash, money is easy to borrow, any company that wants to expand can easily do it, you can float a bond, you can do an IPO, there is a ton of money floating around.
During those times that is when you raise taxes in order to accomplish the things that government should accomplish.
We have bridges that are falling apart. We have water supplies that are contaminated with lead. We've got an electric grid that's 150 years old - or more than a hundred years old in many parts of the United States - that needs to be replaced with solar and renewable and wind power and smart grids and flexible grids and resilient grids.
All of these kinds of infrastructure: our highways are filled with potholes, our airports are crumbling, and our internet infrastructure - as I experienced this week.
Our internet infrastructure is crappy because it's all mostly all in the hands of for-profit corporations that are more interested in squeezing profits out than providing customer service or expanding capabilities. So that's what's going on.
So what you do when the economy is really good is you raise taxes and you make those investments because those investments will return a profit.
For every dollar that we spent on the GI Bill back in the 1940s and 50s sending mostly young men to college who had been in World War Two we got $7 back in additional taxes.
For every dollar that Dwight Eisenhower spent on the national interstate highway system, depending on the study you look at, we made between a hundred and thousand dollars in additional taxes.
Infrastructure pays back and it will pay back during those times when the economy is sliding.
When you do tax cuts in order to stimulate an economy you do that when the economy is in a recession as President Obama did in 2009. The stimulus Act of 2009, which included some tax cuts, principally rolled back by one percentage point the social security tax deduction for a year. So there was an actual reduction of taxes for low-income people across the United States.
And when that happens, that stimulates the economy and we saw it in real time. We watched as we went from losing 700,000 jobs a month to creating several hundred thousand jobs a month for the next seven years as a result of that stimulus.
So the Republicans are doing this completely ass-backwards.
But then Corker comes along and says, "okay, I'm concerned that this is going to cost more than one and a half trillion dollars, this might blow up the deficit more than one and a half trillion dollars." He's willing to add a trillion and a half to the deficit, apparently. "And so we're going to put an automatic trigger in that will raise taxes when tax revenues drop."
Well, when do tax revenues drop? When you're in a recession!
So Bob Corker just said, let's put into law that when we hit a recession, which is the time you should be cutting taxes, we're going to raise taxes, which will make the recession worse.
These guys are idiots!
Comments
#2
Let us build space ships... search for intelligent life elsewhere in the universe.. there isn't any here on this the "turd" planet from the sun. Through the lens of an anthropologist: we are just another species doomed for extinction by our persistent dedication to Social Darwinism. If there is a "God" we must be his favorite show.
#3
Holy Hell; Normastrump! In such a short post you explain my contempt for the human species rite now! Hate to be a fatalist here but; the coup is in progress and if they get the tax legislation we are done short of fires/torches and pitchforks! Yes; we must be entertainment to something!!!! And, just digest this; it was with 25% of voters that they had to "turn" against their own interest using racism and mysonogy.......Not many mirrors in houses anymore!
#4
Many years ago I confronted a Teabagger who was handing out pamphlets in a Walmart Parking lot. In fact it was when the Kochbaggers were just getting organized. He muttered something about fighting to rescue our government from big money interests. I laughed and tried to explain who was behind his astro-turf delusion by pointing out how he was fighting to prop up the very elites already controlling our government. I could tell by the look on his face that he was lost in the O-zone with zero comprehension of who the Kochs were and why they were using gullible citizens like him to satiate their own out of control greed/mental illness at all of our expense.
Just like Bachmann, the guy in the parking lot had nothing to fnn offer, not even a defense of the Kochs..LOL...just a dumb ass stare!
I knew right at that moment this country was under a full on assault by the Fascists and that we were in big fnn trouble.
#5
#1; 2; 3; Correct... there is stupid in spades all over the place
Not too sure if that is part of a design
#6
Why isn't Pelosi demanding that Trump step down? He's accused of being a pedophile rapist with an untold number of sexual assaults on women. I'm so disgusted with Dems like her never willing to go on offense...much safer to attack your own....huh?
#7
Bachmann: LMAO... we've seen this tax bill show before, it's called trickle down! We already have the answer...my god.
#8
Pretty certain that food content is full of addictive elements that are mind dulling... TV is mind dulling... TV content is biased and mind dulling... politically correct education is mind dulling
The opioid pandemic openly accepted
All doing well for the wealthy and corporations
Keep the peasants ignorant
#9
Part of the tax scam not mentioned nearly enough is the already effective corp tax rate...which is under 20%!!!! Not even the Dems point this out. Jobs leave this country because slave labor turns millionaires into billionaires....not because of our tax rates.
#10
As deepspace once pointed out about my posts.... I'm just shouting into the god damn wind....and I believe that comment to be true.
My heroes are the patriots who protested on inauguration day and are now facing 75 years in jail for exercising their First Amendment rights. Millions of us need to follow their example.
Fascism is real and it's here. Money and power has been extremely concentrated, so next thing to go is our First Amendment. This isn't rocket science.
#11
Labeling people as evil, dumb idiots is not much of an argument. Why is that all of our well paid mainstream journalists don't feel it necessary to explain things. As for conventional wisdom, is that the kind of thinking that has brought America to a state of affairs where we are deeply in debt and yet see nothing wrong with spending trillions on foreign adventures? I don't share Tom's support of Eisenhower's interstate highway idea that he brought back from Nazi Germany. It was and is a massive bonus for the automobile industry and destroyed our railroads. Now we're facing the threat of climate change and would be far better off with more trains and less automotive traffic. As for the last stimulus, it was a big favor to corporate interests and finance.
#12
Regarding Ohe8-12" #1 post: this is a classic example of the thinking of many Americans regarding how the economy and taxes work. But particularly the thinking of Republicans, that love to pretend when convenient, that the economy works like a light switch that you can just turn on and off at will. To pretend that the effects of the tax bill, if enacted, will have any major affect by the elections in 2018 is just a bald-faced lie.
The effects of economic change, when new tax legislation becomes law, often moves with glacial slowness initially, but eventually can steamroll to train wreck speed. It took almost 8 years for the disastrous effects of W's economic policies to smash head-on into reality…and he had the benefit of being able to start two wars and pump trillions of dollars into the economy via the defense industry, leaving us to foot the bill while all his rich buddies walked away scot free, leaving near total destruction in their path.
Sound familiar? They wouldn't really do this again…would they?
Of course, that's what makes it such a great scam every time. The corndog suckers are buttered up with a bunch or nationalist or bigoted propaganda, then promised that a bit of small change will piss down upon them. Before they wake up to being duped again, the billionaires have made off with their house, savings and IRAs. Then the Republican voters come crawling back demanding that someone be held accountable for their own stupidity.
Time has told us over and over again. But if your refuse to listen because it conflicts with your opposite universe agenda, don't be surprised when your opposite universe implodes.
#13
#8,
Help for little Johnny,
You can learn anything.For free. For everyone. Forever.
#14
The only time I almost lost my house and did lose my grandmothers house, Obama was forking money over to the bankers. W caused the problem but it was Obama who decided how to "fix it".
As for some of the chatter here, what ever happend to "taking the high road"???
Or is this your high road???
We bounce back and forth between D & R presidents yet nothing changes for the better...why???
#15
Being told to be patient while waiting for all the good things to come seems to be the end game for both sides. Keeping us forever hopeful. That's the real plan.
#16
The "high road" has been washed out by the endless tsunami of rightwing bullshit.
Yes, we keep bouncing back between sanity and insanity. Some would have us believe that the solution is to compromise with insanity. Others believe that divide and lose to insanity is the solution. Hence the pendulum swings.
#17
Nice writeup HotCoffee. I agree with a lot of what you say but W was in no way totally responsible for the banking crisis. Look toward Barney Frank and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's huge contribution to that debacle.
BTW, Kahn academy is a great resource for those that choose to home school.
Thanks for the reminder.
#18
@#8 Hephaestus, your statement "Keep the peasants ignorant" is correct,
Ignorant peasants are dependent on the government.
Which political party benefits from that demographic?
#19
"W caused the problem but it was Obama who decided how to "fix it"." HC
Let's put an end to the myth that W created the economic bust of 2008. The bust was cooked into place a decade before when Pres. Clinton, with the aide of AG Janet Reno forced banks to loan money to people so they could purchase houses. People who were poor and with little or no credit history, or some with bad credit ratings and had no intention of ever repaying the loan were given home mortgages. Referred to as the sub-prime mortgage crisis. AG Reno used her office (DoJ) to pressure the banks to loan the money. The banks, in turn were sitting on bad loans and they knew it. So, they bundled these bad loans together and sold them to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac along with other unsuspecting customers looking for investment opportunities (unethical maybe but not illegal). When the bills came due, well, everyone knows the rest of the story. GWB warned Congress, more than once, of the dangers. He was ignored and was even criticized for raising the warning flag.
So, to blame GWB for the economic collapse is dishonest. Both parties are to blame for ignoring the warnings but it was the democrats who put the disasterous policy into motion.
K2
http://commonsensewonder.blogspot.com/2011/10/remember-janet-reno-threatening-banks.html
#20
Correct K2.
W's public statements to congress concerning this issue.
Documented many times but not ever acknowledged by leftie/socialists.
#21
Flynn is singing like a canary.
No banks were ever forced to make loans. They were doing it gleefully and as fast as they could.
#22
@21 Legend:
"No banks were ever forced to make loans. They were doing it gleefully and as fast as they could."
Source please
#23
One of Thom Hartmann's attributes is his reshaping of history. Everything from Rubio to guns to financial advice with Reagan being his most laughable.
#24
If an infinite number of Republicans on an infinite number typewriters can produce a perfect tax plan, what is the lesson we should learn?
We need more monkeys!
#25
Hey Thom, it is Richard Uhline(pronounced uline). He is CEO of Uline industries, largest U.S. office supplies company. Extreme right wing nut and yes they give10's of millions to the GOP.
#27
#26 Sources for what????
#28
DianeR and everyone that responded to my post thank you for your thoughts.
I do recall Dems pushing for loans, I don't know that banks had to, or that they had to bundle...seems they recouped their losses several times over. In my opinon Obama, Clintons and Bushes are of the same policical family.
#29
Bush was president for 7 years + when the 2007 crash started and you trolls want to blame the Democrats. Why do Republicans not take responsibilty for anything. Tax cuts and Defense spending were the real culbrits. Now the Fascist Republican Party is doing it again.
#30
Rick steves
Read my link in #23. It lays out the entire banking crisis timeline and names the persons responsible. BOTH parties participated in the mortgage crisis and your friend Barney Frank was in it up to his fetlocks. I remember that pompous fat ass dancing like a finger puppet on national TV. He got caught and bailed, we got stuck.
Here it is again in case you are too lazy to scroll.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/hey-barney-frank-th...
#31
Well said Mr. Hartmann, keep up the good work
#32
“Why do Republicans not take responsibility for anything?” That’s because they are sociopaths.
#33
Thom,
The Republican Tax Bill looks to me like a "Republican Door To Future Elections" . They know Trump and their own inability to govern makes this Administration the last Republican-owned congress and presidency in a long time.
If they can act now to destroy the future American economy while Democrats and progressives are in power, then they will do it. Democrats will be forced to "raise taxes" to pay for debt incurred by this enourmous handout to the corporatists and 1%. It is cynical at its core. It is unAmerican in principle.
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There's a simple answer to the dilemma presented. If the Republicans are wrong about the Tax bill, they will lose big time in the upcoming elections. If they're correct about the tax bill, well I guess a lot of Democrat politicians will be out of work. It's really that simple. And all the theories about what will happen when it becomes law are meaningless...time will tell.