I figured it was almost certainly going to a conference committee anyways, and that the final bill will have to be passed again by both the House and the Senate.
True, but now it is clear that due to a mistake, the corporate tax cut doesn’t actually cut corporate taxes. To fix this (ie, make it so that it does cut corporate taxes) they need to find the money to do it. It was always going to conference, but this is a big problem to fix in conference.
How big of a problem? I looked through the article and couldn’t find the amount. How much money do they need to find to be able to repeal the AMT? Is that a $100B chunk? $500B? $1T?
I don’t have that answer, but it’s got to be somewhat significant considering that the GOP has been trying to get rid of the AMT for a long time (which, I actually agree with) but put it back into the Senate version to make the numbers work. The numbers are balancing on the head of a pin at this point.
Bigger problem is that a bill so hastily written likely has other unintended consequences.
The good news is that they’ll have a conference committee to look through it and fix those unintended consequences.
The sad reality is that Congress isn’t particularly good at writing legislation (literally, their job). For example, I suspect that you believe ObamaCare was a wonderful piece of legislation that went through all sorts of reviews and public hearings and was well-thought-out, with lots of time to review before a final vote was taken. It’s the sort of process your side is quite proud of, the sort of process that ought to produce really high-quality legislation. But did it? Was ObamaCare free of unintended consequences and legislative screw-ups? Of course we know the answer is “no”.
When have you ever heard or seen that said about Obamacare? It’s a tremendous advance for us as a people and a nation, but it needs a great deal of further improvement; pretty much any of us in the majority think so.
As for its very real imperfections, with even a slight amount of something other than “Eff off” from your team, that wouldn’t necessarily be the case. Your tax plan, by comparison, IS nothing more than “Eff off”.
Oh, btw, there isn’t necessarily a conference/revote. the House could simply vote to accept the Senate version and that would be it. Given the massive outcry against this monstrosity, that’s probably even what to expect.
Just for example, here’s a quote by Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.):
You’re going to have to make the case that Obamacare was written and debated as hastily as this was. You can make the case that it was hasty, I suppose. But there is no precedent for this tax bill.
The question was about your unhelpful claim: "I suspect that you believe ObamaCare was a wonderful piece of legislation that went through all sorts of reviews and public hearings and was well-thought-out, with lots of time to review before a final vote was taken. "
Not.
As for Coons’ correct statement that Republican amendments were consdered, (A) They voted against the bill anyway, proving themselves insincere, wanting only to weaken the end result, and (B) Can you see *any *difference in how your guys handled *this *thing?
No, I’m making the claim that “Bigger problem is that a bill so hastily written likely has other unintended consequences” is silly. Even non-hastily-written bills (like I’m confident you’d agree ObamaCare was), still has “unintended consequences” / mistakes. The reason for the unintended consequences / mistakes is because Congress fundamentally isn’t very good at writing legislation, not because of the haste.
(A) How many Republican amendments were actually adopted in the final ObamaCare legislation? I don’t know the answer. Did Dems give them 100% of what they asked for? 90%? 75%? 50%? Just because an amendment was “considered” doesn’t mean they’re under some obligation to vote for the final legislation, particularly if the amendment is rejected. There’d be nothing insincere about that.
(B) Yes. It was continuing a long slide in Washington towards increased haste and secrecy when writing legislation. This was the next step in that progression, not some whole new direction.
(A) Over 100 were adopted. Many other cites are out there; it was pretty widely reported at the time, although not on Fox.
(B) The question was about including, not excluding, all elected members of a body in major legislation. There is no “continuing slide” from all to none.
The weaknesses of Obamacare are in large part the Republicans’ fault, although you *could *blame the Democrats for being naive about the Republicans’ sense of responsibility and commitment to the national interest above their party’s. The myriad tragedies of this tax bill are in *no *way the Democrats’ fault. Agreed?
I asked about a percentage, not count. Was that 100 out of 1000? 100 out of 101? Your cite says that the ACA “did take at least some minority proposals into account”. Presumably then, it did not adopt some significant portion of minority proposals. I think it’s hogwash to say the Republicans proved themselves “insincere” by voting against a bill that failed to include a significant portion of their proposals. For example, Senator Corker voted against the tax bill, because it did not include a proposal he cared about. He was not “insincere” in the process though
I’d not quite agree to “no way”, but for the most part, yes. For example, the tragedy that may befall Hillsdale College and the various others that do not take federal funds is largely of the Democrats’ making. I’m hoping this gets fixed in the conference committee.
I’m not sure how many other amendments were offered by / largely supported by Dems or how many were adopted. I’m prepared to guess, without knowing, that it was not a lot.
That’s an irrelevant question. Percentage of what is offered is not an indicator of degree of cooperation. For example, offering 1,000 amendments is almost certainly a dilatory tactic, so a complaint that not enough dilatory amendments were adopted is not a criticism that anyone should take seriously.
It’s the substance of the amendments themselves that should be the concern. As a prima facie matter, having 100 amendments adopted to any legislation is a lot. A WHOLE lot. If you want to claim that the amendments were not substantive, then you shouldn’t have to make ElvisL1ves disprove your innuendo. Nor should you be able to argue from ignorance, to the effect of, “If you can’t tell me what the amendments were, we can assume they were non-substantive.”
The only one that sticks out in my memory is the Grassley one about Congress requiring to use the ACA exchanges. I call that a substantive amendment, and one that has sparked years of legal battles. If you want to go through the others that were adopted to show that they were non-substantive, that’s your case to make, not anyone else’s.
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Did any Republican argue against the amendment on the substantive grounds raised in the article? Or did Republicans not know why the provision, which seems to have been poorly understood, appeared in the bill in the first place?
Haste, in this case in particular, made things way worse. The bill accidentally doesn’t even do the thing that it’s supposed to do and give tax breaks to the rich because they screwed up the AMT issue.
Do your own homework. Let us know what you come up with.
All of those economic projections by people who do it for a living just don’t mean anything compared to what you *want *to believe, apparently.
Why - because fuck 'em, that’s why?
In no way were the Democrats permitted to be involved in any of this. It’s all on you guys. All of it.
False:
Yes:
The irony of the GOP being such Keystone Cops of the Senate that they couldn’t even get their tax cuts for the rich right is almost too funny to be true. I wonder who was the poor guy who had to break the news to McConnell. 
IIRC, you noted earlier that this is probably not the final version of the bill. I don’t see how this is any serious obstacle to the bill ultimately achieving its purpose. Maybe I’m missing something though.