Quote Originally Posted by Dreadnaught View Post
The pre-conference amendments are unfortunate but somewhat inevitable, and a bit of seeing the trees but not the forest. The centerpiece is reduced corporate rates, shifting to a semi-territorial system, eliminating distortions like SALT and curtailing dubious things like mortgage interest and estate taxes. It's not perfect, but it's decent and all our political system will bear. So be it. We'll see what happens in the future.
Ah, but no one was marching in the streets yelling, "reduce corporate tax rates!" No, the campaign that won the election made promises for the working class and middle class. Instead we have plans from house and senate that favor corporations that are already doing just fine, thank you very much, giving them permanent tax cuts, while individual tax cuts expire in ten years.

But I don't believe in the "adding to the deficit" nonsense any more than I believe in the "pay for itself" line. Part of what made this bill hard to pass has been crazy Congressional budget rules that require impossible levels of forecasting precision when setting tax rates, but do nothing to impose sane ideas such as zero baseline budgeting. But if we take these numbers at face value (and I don't), $1 trillion in a decade for a government that will spend maybe $50 trillion in that same decade? Give me a break.
So if deficits don't matter...why has the GOP been campaigning on just that? And if conservatives don't think tax cuts can 'pay for themselves'...then how the hell can they explain this Trickle Down voo doo economics?

Like Citizens United, this will probably go down as a positive stepping stone that is nonetheless wildly misunderstood and vilified by the left.
Riiight, it's only misunderstood and vilified by the left. If it weren't for *them* it would be the Tax Reform that Republicans have been promising for decades.