Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, has called the president unhinged, and decried the tax proposal that just sprinted at lightning speed to passage in the senate as a boon to the rich at the expense of everybody else. The good senator also is in favor of working on documentation to help Dreamers under DACA, which has nothing to do with the tax bill. With a promise, and what he admits is not real ironclad commitment from senate leadership, a leadership that has proven time and again that their word means nothing, Senator Flake has voted for a bill he has called a disaster.
Senator Susan Collins of Maine voted against the repeal of Obamacare, citing her concerns for those who will lose their insurance under the republican plan. The tax bill contains a provision eliminating the requirement that people who fail obtain health insurance would be subject to increasing fines, coverage for them that would otherwise be subsidized by the government. On the same promise that this issue would be looked at in some hazy time in the future, she voted for this tax bill, thereby ensuring that the people she said she was protecting would be thrown off the rolls of the insured and increasing premiums for everyone else.
Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said he would not vote for any bill that increased the national debt and busted the budget. In exchange for an increase in the amount pass through businesses can deduct from their taxes, a pet project of his, he voted for a bill that will add more than a trillion dollars to the budget. By the way, the increase in the deductibility of pass through businesses, his "must have" in order to vote for this bill, will add even more to the deficit.
Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted against the repeal of Obamacare. She was leaning against voting for this monstrosity, when suddenly in the bill appeared a provision opening the Alaska Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration, something that has nothing whatsoever to do with taxes or tax relief, but does have a whole lot to do with a pet project of hers to make those poor oil and gas companies a little less poor. So she voted for the tax bill, and has now practically ensured the destruction off one of the last pristine wildlife preserves in the country or on the planet for that matter.
And the newly sainted Senator John McCain, who has been on a crusade railing against legislation being rushed through the senate without hearings, without public comment, without scoring from the congressional budget office and without proper time for the senators to read what they were voting on voted for this bill. By the way, he announced that he was satisfied that the bill had been properly drafted, presented, debated and scored more than a day before the more than five hundred page tax bill was actually published and distributed to the senators.
Do not ever let any of these lily livered gutless excuses for human beings tell you again that they are fighting for you, fighting for the middle class and fighting for jobs.
Ever.
Not when the corporate executives who will lead the creation of these so called great paying jobs have already told the head of the idiot in chief's national economic council to his face that they will not use their tax windfall to create jobs, but will do what they always do when they get windfalls -- pocket the money.
For obvious reasons, I have not had the chance to read the bill. I only know what I have seen in the news and on various on line sources discussing the bill. At this point, I figure my taxes will go up about two thousand dollars this year mostly because I live in New York and my property taxes are above the limit for the deduction imposed under this bill. The only way I benefit under this bill is if I sell my house and move before I have to do my taxes next year. Selling my house in New York is going to be a little more difficult now, as the senate has managed for the first time in the history of this country to pass legislation that will have the effect of discouraging people from buying a house, at least in states like New York where we have high taxes.
And don't tell me the solution is lowering taxes on the state and local level. I want the children of this state to be able to go to properly staffed and supplied schools, protected by the police and fire departments. I want my libraries. I want the public water systems to be properly maintained.
And I want the trash to continue to be collected, which at this point may include the politicians.
With the passage of this legislation, I still have health insurance. With the repeal of the mandate, more people will choose not to get insurance, mostly the young and healthy who think they do not need it. That means my insurance premiums will go up. The estimates I have seen have the premium increases pegged at anywhere from ten to twenty-five percent -- annually -- above what the increases would have been without the repeal.
And on top of everything else, my tax decrease, which I figure will cost me somewhere between two and three thousand dollars a year, is temporary, so in ten years my taxes will be even higher. Maybe if I stand on my head and look at my taxes, they will actually at least look like a real decrease.
While I am certainly much more well off than most, I believe my situation is fairly typical. I have read that the vast majority of people polled opposed this tax bill, many vehemently. Yet in the face of overwhelming opposition, the bill passed.
Why?
Congressman Chris Collins of New York explained all of this a month or so ago when he candidly told the public that his big donors, you know, the guys who actually do get tax cuts -- huge ones -- from this bill, had told him that if he doesn't get tax "reform" passed, not to bother calling them again. Nobody has denied that they are voting for the bill for this reason.
So now we truly know, as if we did not already know, where the allegiance of congress stands.
It ain't with us.
