Category: US Senate

An Old Saw’s New Twist: Death (of the Deficit Hawks) and Taxes

The following article by David Hawkings was posted on the Roll Call website November 27, 2017:

A few Republicans clinging to old party orthodoxy could doom Trump’s big win

Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney has said “a lot of this is a gimmick,” referring to the tax bill’s expiration dates for some of the lower rates. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call file photo)

This apparent contradiction confronts Congress as it returns for a grueling month of legislating: The Republicans who run the Capitol, so many of whom came to Washington as avatars of fiscal responsibility, are going to spend the rest of the year working to make a worsening federal balance sheet look even worse.

December holds the potential for a productivity breakthrough, but it also threatens to end in embarrassing deadlock — which is why the clear consensus within the upper reaches of the congressional GOP is that it’s the right time to get comfortable with any feelings of hypocritical guilt.

The party’s acute political need to be seen as starting to make something with their unified government before the dawn of the midterm campaign season, the leadership and President Donald Trump have made plain, will need to take precedence over the demands of the relatively few remaining deficit hawks trying to push the party back toward its traditional core values of balancing budgets and holding the line on borrowing. Continue reading “An Old Saw’s New Twist: Death (of the Deficit Hawks) and Taxes”

For Trump, GOP tax bill could have big downside

The following article by Melanie Zanona was posted on the Hill website November 26, 2017:

© Getty Images

The GOP tax plan that is speeding through Congress could deliver a much-needed win for the White House, but it could also kill one of Trump’s other top priorities: legislation to rebuild U.S. infrastructure.

Not only would the tax overhaul use up one of the potential funding options for repairing infrastructure, it would also eliminate a financing tool that states have used to back a wide range of infrastructure projects.

That could spell doom for Trump’s infrastructure overhaul, which was always going to be a tough sell for fiscal conservatives on Capitol Hill. Continue reading “For Trump, GOP tax bill could have big downside”

Senate GOP tax bill hurts the poor more than originally thought, CBO finds

The following article by Heather Long was posted on the Washington Post website November 26, 2017:

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) had a tense exchange during a markup of the GOP tax bill on Nov. 16. (Senate Finance Committee)

The Senate Republican tax plan gives substantial tax cuts and benefits to Americans earning more than $100,000 a year, while the nation’s poorest would be worse off, according to a reportreleased Sunday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Republicans are aiming to have the full Senate vote on the tax plan as early as this week, but the new CBO analysis showing large, harmful effects on the poor may complicate those plans. The CBO also said the bill would add $1.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, a potential problem for Republican lawmakers worried about America’s growing debt. Continue reading “Senate GOP tax bill hurts the poor more than originally thought, CBO finds”

GOP leaders in advanced talks to change tax plan in bid to win over holdouts

The following article by Damian Paletta was posted on the Washington Post website November 26, 2017:

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) is surrounded by reporters as he goes to vote on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Susan Walsh/AP)

Senate Republicans are seriously considering several last-minute changes to their tax legislation in an effort to mollify wavering members, four people familiar with the discussions said, as GOP leaders seek to keep their members from defecting ahead of crucial votes this week.

The lawmakers attracting the most concern from leadership and the White House are Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who say the current version of the bill favors corporations over other businesses.

There are numerous members demanding changes, and their desires don’t all overlap. Together, the requests put Republican leaders in a difficult position, as they attempt to accommodate individual holdouts on a one-off basis without losing other members or creating a situation in which the bill collapses under the weight of disparate demands. Continue reading “GOP leaders in advanced talks to change tax plan in bid to win over holdouts”

Who is Leeann Tweeden?

The following article was posted on the Star Tribune website November 16, 2017:

Screen Grab of Fox News’ Sean Hannity Show

Leeann Tweeden, who said Sen. Al Franken kissed and groped her without her consent on a USO tour in 2006, is a news anchor for the morning show on KABC-AM radio in Los Angeles.

She started out in the 1990s as a model, appearing in magazines such as Maxim, FHM and Playboy.

From 2002 to 2007, she was a regular cast member on Fox Sports Net’s “Best Damn Sports Show Period,” hosted by comedian Tom Arnold.

Later, she hosted late-night poker shows on NBC and an Ultimate Fighting Championship show on Fox Sports 1. She has appeared as a regular guest on “Dr. Drew” on HLN and “Hannity” on Fox News. Continue reading “Who is Leeann Tweeden?”

Stone appeared to know Franken allegation was coming

Former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone appeared to know there were sexual misconduct allegations involving Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) hours before they became public.

Stone has been banned from Twitter, but at 1 a.m. on Thursday morning an account connected to him tweeted a quote from the Republican political operative.

“Roger Stone says it’s Al Franken’s ‘time in the barrel’. Franken next in long list of Democrats to be accused of ‘grabby’ behavior,” read the tweet from Enter the Stone Zone.

Enter the Stone Zone is an account that claims to share “political commentary” from Stone.

Hours later, Leeann Tweeden, a KABC-AM news anchor, accused Franken of kissing and groping her without her consent in 2006. Tweeden said the incidents occurred during a USO tour to entertain troops abroad. She also tweeted a photograph of Franken as evidence.

The photo sparked outrage on social media, and Franken apologized for the incident and said he would cooperate with a Senate ethics investigation into the matter.

After Tweeden’s account went public, Enter The Stone Zone tweeted again, sharing a Politico report about the allegations.

“As predicted by Roger Stone, It’s now Senator Al Franken’s time in the barrel,” the tweet published at 11 a.m. read.

Stone was banned from Twitter in October after a number of profane tweets.

Enter The Stone Zone’s parent website, stonecoldtruth.com, includes a page where supporters can donate to Stone’s legal defense in his pending lawsuit against Twitter over his suspension.

Reports of Franken’s misconduct come as Congress is facing new scrutiny over how it handles sexual harassment. A bill introduced on Wednesday would overhaul policies to prevent and address sexual harassment on Capitol Hill.

News of Franken’s misconduct also comes as Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore is facing multiple allegations of sexual misconduct, including assault, from women who were teenagers at the time.

View the post here.

Could the battle for the GOP’s soul leave Republicans unelectable?

The following article by Amber Phillips was posted on the Washington Post website November 25, 2017:

“We are in trouble as a party if we continue to follow both Roy Moore and Donald Trump.”

That was Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) Monday, doubling down on something he said on a hot mic last weekend: That if the Republican Party becomes “the party of Roy Moore and Donald Trump, we are toast.”

What Flake said publicly is what Republican leaders are stressing over privately. They fear Trump is taking the party in a direction that could make it unelectable. Continue reading “Could the battle for the GOP’s soul leave Republicans unelectable?”

How the tax package could blur the separation of church and politics

The following article by Susan Anderson, Profession of Accounting, Elon University, was posted on the Conversation website November 22, 2017:

Rep. John Lewis, a Georgia Democrat, raised questions about the proposed changes to charity tax laws during a congressional hearing.

The tax package pending in Congress includes a provision that would leave churches and other nonprofits, which by law must be nonpartisan, suddenly free to engage in political speech.

This measure, currently only in the House version of the bill, could potentially change charitable life as we know it. Continue reading “How the tax package could blur the separation of church and politics”

To Regain Its Sanity, the Republican Party Must Give Up Voodoo Economics

The following article by Charles P. Pierce was posted on the Esquire website October 17, 2017:

This crazy might be the deepest rooted.

Credit: Getty

Professor Krugman seems miffed, via the NYT:

Modern conservatives have been lying about taxes pretty much from the beginning of their movement. Made-up sob stories about family farms broken up to pay inheritance taxes, magical claims about self-financing tax cuts, and so on go all the way back to the 1970s. But the selling of tax cuts under Trump has taken things to a whole new level, both in terms of the brazenness of the lies and their sheer number. Both the depth and the breadth of the dishonesty make it hard even for those of us who do this for a living to keep track.

You knew this was coming when the president* tweeted out how proud he was that his tax plan was praised by Arthur Laffer, the cocktail-napkin Kreskin of supply-side economics, the original sorcerer who concocted the spells that produced those magical tax cuts, and, finally, the guy who fed the Republican Party a bowl of the very tastiest monkeybrains. The prion disease’s first symptom was the adoption of what Poppy Bush called, correctly, the “voodoo economics” of Ronald Reagan’s first budget. The Republican Party bought into an economic theory that was just as detached from reality as anything Reagan ever said about trees and air pollution, or anything the current president* has said about anything. Continue reading “To Regain Its Sanity, the Republican Party Must Give Up Voodoo Economics”