No, it’s not the final version of the bill. Which is why I specified “the Senate” and not “Congress”.
It needn’t be a killer obstacle in order to be funny. But it does mean that the bill passed by the Senate doesn’t count, as is. And the provisions that were hastily thrown in there were done so, not for shits and giggles, but to secure votes. If they have to be removed, then the votes are no longer secure. I expect they’ll find a way out of that mess, but it’s still funny. YMMV.
One likely result of this mistake - and others like it that may yet be revealed - is that it kills the likelihood of the House passing the Senate bill as-is.
i read the debate. Toomey was asked if any bother college benefitted from his provision. He was unable to name any, saying only that if there are colleges like Hillsdale, they could benefit too.
Toomey was asked if the college rejected Federal aid because of a discrimination case in the 1980s. Toomey did not know. He was asked if the DeVos family was the major source of the endowment, and he didn’t know. Toomey then said he knows that his “colleagues on the far left” didn’t have a fond opinion of Hillsdale, but he likes it. Toomey was then asked again to provide a list of other colleges that would qualify for this loophole, at which point Toomey literally said, “If my colleague doesn’t like that provision, he can offer an amendment to strike it.”
Keep in mind, that Democrats had only hours to read the bill and find this provision before the whole bill would be voted on.
Seems to me that Toomey did a terrible job of defending the provision, knew nothing more than it would help a conservative college, implicitly acknowledged that he inserted it simply as an earmark for a college in his state, and then — get this — challenged Democrats to strike it!
We discussed the concept earlier of substantive and non-substantive amendments. Toomey offered a non-substantive defense of the provision, then dared someone to try to strike it, and a couple Republicans didn’t buy his terrible arguments. I bet you aren’t going to get that side of the story in your right-wing media echo chamber. But you can read it in the Congressional Record.
I actually listened to a portion of Toomey’s defense, as he was giving it. I agree that he didn’t do a great job of defending it, and it would have been far better of he could’ve rattled off a list of six colleges subject to the provision off the top of his head, but he did make the point that it wasn’t some specific provision for Hillsdale but for any / every college that chooses to forego federal funding. That was the substantive part of his defense, as I see it.
I’m curious, knowing now that there are additional colleges that would benefit from this provision, does that move the needle on your feelings? Do you think the policy (that colleges who don’t accept federal funds should be exempt from this endowment tax) makes sense?
As an aside (and with very little hope that it will cause them to cease) I am personally sick-as-fuck of all these little jabs thrown at me on this site suggesting that I’m living in a right-wing echo chamber. First off, I spend a shitload of time on the SDMB. I also routinely read and cite from a wide range of media outlets including HuffPo, the NYT, WaPo, CNN, etc. Of all the Dopers who should be attacked for only listening one side of the story, I submit that I am a long ways down that list.
There’s only the one. So now *you *know.
You apparently don’t read cites, so I’m not sure it’s worth continuing to try to reply to you, but to anyone else who is interested, this is from the cite I gave in post #713:
ElvisL1ves, if you have evidence that all of these colleges take federal funds, please present it now or withdraw your claim.
No, I don’t think the policy makes sense. It’s like saying that people who forego food stamps, Medicare, or some other benefit should pay less in taxes.
I think the policy is also a transparent attempt to give benefits to institutions that share an ideological bent. That is not fair. Dressing it up as a principle - that colleges that do X Y and Z shouldn’t pay taxes — doesn’t make it fair either. To use an extreme example, poll taxes were designed to suppress black votes. Just because “black people shouldn’t vote” was dressed up to read “gotta pay the tax before you vote!” does not make the policy fair. So if one policy is clearly designed for a political purpose, but dressed up in a different way, we should look through the window dressing to see if the policy intent is fair.
And one last thing: I apologize for the echo chamber dig in the last post. When you cited that silly right wing page that demanded Dems apologize to a handful of right wing colleges for being besmirched by an effort to create a loophole for only one right wing college, the sheer lunacy of that opinion piece/pretend news article really ticked me off. That means I should criticize the source itself and not take potshots at you. After all, you are fun to argue with.
Late to this game from yesterday but I nominate the moniker
“WealthCare”
Might there be other shared characteristics of these colleges? Like, for instance, their economics schools, are they academic bastions for conservative thought? Places where “supply side” can be said with a straight face and met with sober acceptance? That is to, say without giggling?
Thanks for this post… that is absolutely priceless.
When you’re in such a rush to jam through your $1.5 trillion dollar tax cut written in crayon (er, well, handwritten in margins actually, but close enough) for your corporate overlords, that you accidentally don’t cut taxes on your corporate overlords and instead just take potshots at your political enemies and cut healthcare from sheer force of habit.
This is an Obamacare repeal with the word “Obamacare” crossed out and “tax cut” written in in crayon.
I gave you one. Did you read it? :rolleyes:
The NYTimes has a good summary on why my family is royally screwedwith this tax plan. Look, I’m not complaining. My wife and I do pretty well, so we should pay a lot in taxes. But, we already pay a lot in taxes! We’re not so wealthy that we can hire tax lawyers to find us tax shelters. We do it ourselves, and we pay the number that gets spit back out on the other side, which is a significant percentage of our income. But, this tax plan kills us. Mostly because it gets rid of the deduction for state/local taxes, meaning I pay taxes on the same money twice, which, if I remember correctly, is something that the GOP rails against with regard to the estate taxes. This was going to be offset by getting rid of the AMT, but they put the AMT back into place.
For all of the talk of this being a tax plan for the wealthy, it should be made clear that it kills the wealthy who got there by working for a living rather than inheriting.
Welcome to the club, amigo. 
We can console each other come April 2019.
But… it’s my understanding that the AMT is (or will be) set so that it only applies above a fairly high income level. Are you sure you’re going to be hit by it? You might just squeak by.
I should add that I’m not opposed to eliminated SALT deductions on federal taxes. Not in principle. I am opposed to flipping a switch, though, instead of phasing something like this in over time so that people can adjust. The mortgage deduction is, indeed, a perk for the rich and no one can tell me with a straight face that it doesn’t increase the price of housing-- the tax deductibility of mortgage interest gets factored into the market price.
I’ve been hit with the AMT for years, and every time they “adjust” it, they do so to keep new people from falling into it, but maintaining the people that it already ensnares. I do sort of resent paying a tax that was specifically intended to tax the 100 or so richest people in the country who were using tax shelters to avoid taxes. I’m not that person, and this tax shouldn’t hit me. I’m sure that the actual 100 richest people in the country manage to avoid paying the AMT.
I’m opposed to the GOP eliminating the SALT deductions when they are always yelling about paying taxes on the same money twice, which is the basis of their argument for eliminating the estate tax.
I feel your pain. I got hit by AMT real hard back during the big tech bust of 2000. And it stayed with me only until recently when I finally recouped all my AMT “credit” (without interest or adjust meant for inflation, btw). You’re right, though. AMT was originally designed for the extremely rich, but ended up hitting lots of folks who were nowhere near that category.
Are you talking about the reduction on the mortgage deduction to $500k, or the mortgage deduction in general?
I have benefited from the mortgage deduction on my piddly $115k house. The last couple of years I’ve ended up paying down enough that it’s not really worth my time to deduct interest unless I’m deducting other expenses as well, but for the first few years, the mortgage interest was significantly bigger than my standard deduction all on its own.
Can still make the argument that it increases prices, I suppose, as it decreases the cost of home ownership, but at the same time, in the end, it still decreases the cost of home ownership, even if it increases the price, maybe it comes out in the wash.
But I see it more as allowing more people on the margins of being able to afford a house to be able to afford it, and I don’t know that encouraging home ownership rather than renting is a bad thing. There are benefits to having people own their homes, rather than renting, or living in apartments. A major benefit to them is that when you buy a home, it’s price locked. Your “rent” doesn’t go up. I know many who got into apartments or rental homes, but had to leave after a few years because of increasing rents.
I meant in general. Most other countries have eliminated this perk from the tax code, and they have not seen it affect home ownership.
As long as the tax code is filled with deductions that help inheritors and corporations, I strongly favor keeping the mortgage deduction. If we want to start talking about truly simplifying the tax code and getting rid of all deductions, then I don’t hold the mortgage deduction sacred.