Damn Obama, what the hell were you doing in 2012? We shouldn’t let that go unanswered, someone call Fox so they can put some investigative journalists to good use.
Paying for the murder of patriots in Benghazi, of course.
More tax cuts and a balanced budget. LOL. Can’t wait to see how they square this circle.
They cut taxes to the bone, and then pass a BBA. Then they say they have no choice but to cut all spending except the military. (Nevermind they could, you know, raise taxes).
I don’t see how they do much with medicare and social security. The people those programs affect do vote. So if they don’t touch military, medicare, ss, and the interest payment on the debt, how can they possibly balance the budget?
They can take it out of the hides of the poor by more or less eliminating medicaid and welfare, but that’s just a small cut overall.
As you say, that won’t balance the budget, much less a budget with more tax cuts. Maybe they are going to do that 10 year magic thing, where we get a balloon tax payment at the end and still call it balanced. Like the mortgage bubble, but with the national budget and you know who on the hook for it. Again.
I wish lawsuits for dereliction of duty actually held teeth against Congresscritters.
This is so effed up. These people are apparently of the firm belief that rich people are the main ones whose taxes need cutting, and if it means that the extra money causes ridiculous asset price bubbles (real estate in cities near the coasts is going bananas AGAIN causing rents to skyrocket) and we turn into a third world “s-hole” because the central government is prevented from spending money on urgent social and infrastructure needs, oh well, too bad so sad, they’ll somehow “go Galt” and retreat to a walled fortress in the mountains or something.
I don’t have kids but I shudder to think of the country my nephews and nieces are going to inherit.
A Constitutional Amendment? Talk about Fake News just so they can pretend to be responsible whilst running wild and crippling the Government options to fix this when the next Democrat has to fix the smoking hole the GOP left again.
So I got my W2 adjusted this month for the new tax law. I’m getting another $100 a month in my paychecks. My tax refund this year was $3200 (mainly from mortgage interest deductions) My total deduction, though, was less than the new $24000 standard deduction. So I figure my taxes have gone up by $160 a month.
This entire tax act was a scam on the middle class. The only way I win in this new law is if I cancel health insurance, cuz I’ll save that premium and pay no penalty. But wait, I live in MA, so I can’t do that (not that I would anyway)
About the same for me. What I find interesting is this year the federal government sent me 1040-ES vouchers, and I am not sure why, I’ve never needed them before.
I am not sure why you think your taxes will go up if the new standard deduction gives you a better option than previously itemizing? The new tax set up will help some people and it will hurt some. My accountant told me that I was the first person whose taxes he had done this year that he thought would be hurt by it. The reason is because as an S Corp owner I can write off my health insurance on my Sch A if my earnings from the business aren’t good. I will lose that next year.
So I got $X a month last year, and $3200 refund from the IRS. I’ll get $X+100 a month this year, and a $0 refund (or owe, who knows!) this year, so I’m out $2200. I’m paying $166/mo more in taxes.
I would wager until people do their taxes next year that nobody knows what the changes will do to/for them. I wouldn’t want more back in my paycheck until then. Better safe than sorry.
My tax preparer pulled up a cool sheet showing exactly how much I’ll have to pay in taxes in 2018.
That’s the sign of a quality tax plan right there. Congress didn’t even know what it would do when they voted on it, except help the wealthy. So yeah, mission accomplished.
It’s time to get all worked up over spending!
A perennial GOP favorite, the Balanced Budget Amendment is sluggishly heaving itself out of the fetid pool where it typically sleeps, dreaming its mad dreams.
Basically, this is a Constitutional Amendment that would require congress to never, ever, ever borrow any money and also require a two-thirds majority to agree to any tax increase, forever and ever, amen.
As an Amendment, it of course requires super-majorities in both congressional chambers as well as ratification by two-thirds of the States. So it will be passed and incorporated into the Constitution roughly about the same time that Trump writes a thoughtful book report on Maya Angelou’s I know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
I guess they’re doing this because Ryan promised the Freedom Caucus a vote on it in return for not scuttling his budget last month. If such an amendment were put into law, neither the GOP’s Tax-cuts nor their spending bill would be legal. I guess that would be ironic if their hypocrisy were not so utterly expected.
Even ignoring the disastrous fiscal consequences, I wonder if they’ve even considered what the implications would be of never borrowing. I don’t know if it’s still the case, but it used to be that Hong Kong had a policy of not borrowing at the central government level for fiscal purposes. Even so, they still did meaningful amounts of borrowing, so that there would be a “risk free” benchmark for the bond markets. There’s an enormous demand for Treasury bills for all sorts of purposes. You’d cause havoc in financial markets if there weren’t any available. You already have major issues caused by the shortage of “safe assets”, globally. Taking away by far the biggest proportion of those would be horrendous.
Nobody, including the HFC, actually wants this bill to pass. It’s just what they have to do to try to cover their asses for the ridiculous budget they just passed. Now they can go home and say they voted for a Balanced Budget Amendment to stop this reckless spending with kind-of a straight face.
And it’s fine, because what are their hard-core constituents going to do, vote for a Democrat? They just need some way of giving them the denial they need to keep pulling that R lever.
And the HFC hard-core constituents want a Balanced Budget Amendment, because they have been told over and over for years that it would rein in the out-of-control government, which will fix all their problems and, most importantly, finally put an end to Welfare Queens. Pretty sure none of them have ever actually thought through the consequences.