"Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg at all!"

[L. Coyote]

Byron Dorgan
2 mins ago

Sorry to sound political, but a "middle class" tax cut? Hardly! How about some truth in labeling?

This is a tax cut that explodes the federal deficit and adds to a debt that already reaches $20 trillion. It does that in order to give tax cuts that go mainly to corporations and upper income individuals.

During the storied Lincoln/Douglas debates, Lincoln was making a point that Douglas didn't seem to understand. Lincoln finally asked him, "how many legs does a cow have?" "Four", Douglas replied

Lincoln said, "now, if you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a cow have?" "Five", Douglas said.

Lincoln said, "see, that's where you are wrong. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg at all!"

Calling this tax cut a middle class tax cut doesn't make it so. It is exploding the deficit to give corporations large tax cuts. Call it what they want, it is a historic mistake, both in its consequences and in the manner in which they have done it.

In 1986 I served on the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee when we wrote the last successful tax reform bill. It was a bipartisan bill with support from both democrats and republicans. We closed loopholes, and reduced the top individual income tax rate to 28%.

President Reagan, who was a strong supporter of the tax reform legislation said, "if it increases the deficit, I will veto it!" I wonder, where is that discipline is today?

This bill was written by republicans alone (ideas from democrats were not welcome), and it was done in a 1000 page bill with no advance information about what was in the legislation.

They advertise it as working to keep American jobs here at home. In fact it will do exactly the opposite. This will accelerate the movement of jobs overseas. If you can shift your manufacturing jobs overseas and, by doing so, reduce your tax bill here at home there will be an even greater flood of companies taking flight. That is exactly what they are allowing in this legislation.

Oh, and also, the corporate tax cuts are deep cuts and they are permanent. The tax cuts for individuals will be temporary.

Finally, we have allowed the deduction of state and local taxes paid almost since the income tax was adopted. This legislation, will disallow a full deduction for state and local taxes paid. That means people will be taxed on income they don't have. Said another way, people will be paying a tax on their taxes. Thoughtless and wrong!

They have also added to the bill a provision that repeals the Affordable Care Mandate. People should understand that the only way we were able to require health insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions was because we mandate that everyone be in the health care insurance pool. What they are doing now will undermine the pre-existing condition protections. It is terrible policy.

It appears the republicans will push this through for President Trump. But they will look back on this as a historic mistake. If democrats tried to do something like this, I would be just as critical. However when we did tax reform it was bipartisan and did not increase the debt. Big difference.

At a time when we have a staggering national debt (nearly $20 trillion and large and growing yearly deficits (nearly $700 bill a year) it makes no sense to to be embarking on this reckless policy.

[guillaumeb]

1. It does make sense!!!!!!!!!!

If the donor class demands it of their puppets.

[Moral Compass]

2. I'll agree with the core of this piece but...

Mr. Dorgan is absolutely correct. This is not a middle class tax cut. What this is is what the donor class has paid for and is demanding from their helots.

But...

You can get all misty eyed about the bipartisan tax reform of 1986, but it was also a budget buster and resulted in a huge structural deficit when "defense" spending ballooned while taxes were cut.

What Reagan said was pure political theater and he didn't mean a word of it.

The 1986 bill was justified in the same way as this one--with ludicrous assumptions about economic growth that turned out to be totally made up. David Stockman knew they were made up and when the recession started by the 1986 tax reform was behind some of the tax increases that followed the bill.

The other thing that so many either didn't notice or have forgotten is that for many of us that were making $30-40K a year our taxes went up because when all those brackets got eliminated we were pushed up into a higher bracket while losing all of our deductions (back then your could deduct credit card interest, state sales tax etc.)

Those that made out were in the upper incomes. My upstairs neighbor was pulling in about $125-150K per year. His taxes plummeted. We had an argument about that came very close to violence.

This is just more of the same. It is just more shameless and even more extreme. This is an obvious two step process. Make the rich vastly richer while getting some of the funding from raising the taxes on the poor and lower middle classes. Then when the inevitable budget crisis comes go after Medicare/Medcaid and the great White Whale of the New Deal, Social Security.

What no one seems to be talking about is that if the Republicans can pull that trick off they'll set off a worldwide depression that will make the Great Depression and the Crash of 2008 look mild in comparison. Few people seem to realize how close we are to a deflationary spiral. Too many people are making too little money which makes it impossible to consume all that is being produced. Only the rising tide internationally in traditionally underdeveloped countries such as China and India are keeping that in check along with a lot work by central banks around the world.

This exercise in greedy cynicism could ignite an economic collapse like the world has never seen.