Senate squeaks tax bilk through

In the rush to pass tax reform -- actually the rush to pass almost ANY  major piece of legislation before Trump's first year in office ends -- the Senate used the same tactics it did in trying to pass health care reform.  Craft a bill in secret, hold zero hearings, spring the final version on senators without time to study it -- or even read it in this case -- and force a vote through before the nonpartisan scoring groups can analyze its effect.   The difference is that this time they succeeded in passing it, 51 to 49.

No Democrats voted for what is the most sweeping tax system reform in decades, in contrast to the last tax reform being a largely bipartisan and overwhelmingly positive bill.  Even as the bill is not completely understood -- even by those voting on it -- the public opposes it by strong margins.   This is also a contrast to prior tax reforms.

Why?   Because people know enough to realize that, despite Republicans lies, that this is not good for them.    It is based on pie in the sky expectations of economic growth to make up for the huge tax cuts, mostly to the wealthy.    Scoring analyses by nonpartisan groups -- even without the final version -- all say that it is essentially a transfer of wealth from the middle and working class people to the upper levels of wealthy people.    They should name it the Reverse Robin Hood Tax Reform Bill.   Take from the poor and give it to the rich.

One deception that became apparent in the final day:   Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been painting a rosy picture, declaring that cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy will essentially pay for itself by the phenomenal growth that will stimulate.   And he said he had hundreds of people "working around the clock" on the numbers, which would be revealed before the vote on the bill.   In the end, he never put out any such report.

The first assumption was that the numbers didn't add up to show what he had promised.   Buy then there were leaks from some of these "worker bees," who said they had never been tasked with crunching numbers for a so-called "dynamic scoring" of the bill, where you take into account the effect of anticipated growth on the long-range effects.   Nobody was doing that; they were working on something entirely different from the tax plan.    So Mnuchin simply was lying.

It's a travesty of legislative process.   But Republicans have apparently sold their soul.   The push had been two-fold:    (1)  Big donors were demanding the big tax cuts and threatening to cut off campaign money if they didn't get it;  and (2) Trump was demanding that they pass something, and he didn't much care what;  he just had to have a piece of legislation by the end of his first year.

But you know who has the last say in this?    Voters.   And the 2018 election is coming in less than a year.  Every single member of the House will have to face voters, as will a number of the senators.    And then 2020 isn't too far off after that, when the presidency will be up to the voters.

Ralph

NOTE:    Only the next day after I posted this did I notice that my headline called it a "tax bilk."    My conscious intent was to write "tax bill."   But I decided to let it stand -- because "bilk" exprsses my real feelings about the tax bill.