Some provisions of the bill are very clearly targeted at liberals. One of the clearest, albeit petty, examples is the removal of the tiny subsidy for bicycle commuting — bicycle riding, especially when done for environmental reasons, is a liberal thing.
The following were all key elements of the tax plan designed to screw liberals and blue states generally (though some of these may have been removed from the handwritten bill): —
Two very major provisions are designed to screw university graduate students, or anyone paying off student loans. University education is very much a liberal thing.
The mortgage deduction is especially important for urbanites, who tend to vote D. Homes are more expensive in cities.
The state tax deduction is especially important for residents of high-tax states, i.e. states that spend on the welfare of their citizens. There is a very strong correlation between states’ voting Democratic and their caring for citizens’ well-being — do you also need a cite for that?
But those last two affect mostly the well off. The mortgage deduction is still in for mortgages of $500K or less, and a significant majority of tax payers don’t itemize at all. With the significant increase in the standard deception, that number will almost certainly increase. This tax change is a bonus to the very, very wealthy, but it seems to hit the “fairly well off to quite well off” in those high tax states. I haven’t seen the demographic breakdown, but it would’t surprise me if this hits more Republicans in those high tax states than Democrats.
ETA: My post referenced septimus’ post. Took me too long to compose, and Ravenman snuck a post in while I wasn’t looking.
That much was clear. So your response is to let #681 go completely unchallenged, except to “ask for a cite” on an obviously subjective criterion — though you know perfectly well what I mean and also know that I am correct — so that you can nitpick any cite I choose in defense? Got it.
Don’t know if someone posted this yet, but this calculator lets you figure out how the bill could affect you. My guess of $900 was not far off. http://taxplancalculator.com/
I certainly don’t have enough time to challenge every wrong thing you or others say on here. Most of what you said was pretty obviously just opinion and not factual. The only line that stuck out to me in that post (“There is a very strong correlation between states’ voting Democratic and their caring for citizens’ well-being”) seemed to imply some scientific basis (“very strong correlation”), and so I wondered if there was one. if it’s just, like, your opinion man, then that’s fine, and please consider my request for a cite withdrawn.
For the record, I don’t “know” (or even think) that your opinion about a correlation between voting D and caring for citizens’ well-being is correct.
Was the word I’ve reddened one of those weird typos I make? Or just deliberate irony?
As for the assumption that the “well off” vote R, be aware that one source shows the $100,000+ income group was split exactly evenly between Clinton and Trump. Another source that breaks the $100k+ group into three groups shows all three as almost even. The only income group where Trump led by more than 2% was the $50,000 - $99,999 group. (And within the higher income groups the R voters tend to be more rural, which I think tends to imply smaller home mortgage [del]deception[/del] deduction.)
But you said the stimulus bill didn’t get GOP votes either, but it did, and it needed them, as the number of Dem Senators stood at 58 in February 2009. Here’s the roll calls on cloture and Senate passage of the ARRA.
Anyhow, still just a nitpick, even though it’s now a thoroughly cited nitpick.
That’s got to be one of the best spellcheck “typos” EVERRRR!
OK, I was only suggesting that exactly who is going to be hurt by this bill is a bit more complicated than just saying “high tax states”. It’s still a fact that the vast majority of people are going to get a tax cut. It may not be a big one, and it may not be shit compared to what the very rich are getting, but it’s ~20% the folks (I believe) in between the “vast majority” and the super rich who are going to be hit by this. As I said earlier in the thread, I’m hoping this is enough to hit some of the Republican districts in otherwise Democratic leaning states so as to give the House Republicans some problem in the midterms. It’s a very difficult analysis to do, and I’m not sure the data even exists to do it right, so at this point it’s more of a hope than something I’m sure of.
Care to explain this sort of cheap shot? If my math is right, by that calculator, poor folks also save money (albeit only a few hundred) and the bill has nothing to do with insurance or the lack of it whatsoever.
As I read it, it’s snark aimed at Senator Chuck Grassley’s comments to the effect that poor people waste their money on “booze or women or movies” unlike the heirs of wealthy people who invest their windfalls; and also at Senator Orin Hatch’s comment that there’s “no money” to pay for the children’s health insurance program because he has “a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything.”
Hatch is of course the chief author of the tax cut bill.
An interesting article that the GOP has royally screwed some stuff upthat is going to require going back to the Senate to fix.
"The GOP had originally intended to abolish the AMT. But on Friday, with the clock running out — and money running short — Senate Republicans put the AMT back into their bill. Unfortunately for McConnell, they forgot to lower AMT after doing so.
This is a big problem. The Senate bill brings the normal corporate rate down to 20 percent — while leaving the alternative minimum rate at … 20 percent. The legislation would still allow corporations to claim a wide variety of tax credits and deductions — it just renders all them completely worthless. Companies can either take no deductions, and pay a 20 percent rate — or take lots of deductions … and pay a 20 percent rate."
They can fix this problem in conference, but that will require finding more cuts to make to stay below amount for reconciliation.
