The following article by Paul Buchheit was posted on the AlterNet website November 20, 2017:
Credit: Economist Magazine, August, 2015
Inequality, like a malignant tumor, is growing out of control, and the only response from Congress is to make it even worse. Those at the richest end of the nation seem to have lost all capacity for understanding the meaning and values of an interdependent society. They’ve convinced themselves that they deserve their passively accumulated windfalls, and that poorer people have only themselves to blame for their own misfortunes.
The following article by Andrew Soergel was posted on the U.S. News and World Report website November 10, 2017:
Lawmakers are in the midst of a battle to keep constituents and interest groups happy without exploding the deficit.
The Capitol dome in Washington. (Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)
President Donald Trump rode into town on the backs of several ambitious campaign promises.
But after one year in office, his border wall along America’s southern border remains unbuilt. The Obamacare legislation he vowed to gut while on the campaign trail remains in effect.
And although he’s had more success on deregulation through executive orders and memoranda, the ongoing tax reform battle on Capitol Hill represents the president’s last, best chance for a big-ticket legislative victory this year – and arguably before the 2018 mid-term elections. Continue reading “The Cost of Lower Taxes”
The following article by Alexander Bolton was posted on the Hill website November 5, 2017:
Credit: AP/Evan Vucci
The House GOP tax-reform package has put Senate Republicans in a tough spot, much like the House-passed ObamaCare repeal bill did earlier this year.
The legislation is expected to pass the House, starting a tougher battle in the Senate, where Republicans control 52 seats and can’t pass a bill if they suffer more than two defections and Democrats remain unified.
At least a half-dozen Senate Republicans have already raised concerns about various proposals in the tax measure, setting the stage for arduous negotiations in the upper chamber. Continue reading “Tax bill raises red flags for Senate GOP”
The following article by Susan Milligan was posted on the U.S. News and World Report website November 3, 2017:
From President Trump to Congress, official Washington is focused on the past – not a way forward.
Credit: Charlie Archambault for USN&WR
Last year was arguably one of the most bitter and divisive campaign seasons in recent American history. And Washington seems determined to keep re-living it and re-litigating it.
Investigations on Capitol Hill and in the Justice Department are focused on how Russia interfered with the U.S. election, and whether Donald Trump’s campaign colluded with the foreign nation. Another inquiry is focused on whether millions of people voted illegally last year. Lawmakers in both parties are putting the spotlight on social media companies, asking if they enabled “fake news” that influenced voters. Continue reading “Stuck in Reverse”
NOTE: Minnesota CD3 Rep. Erik Paulsen supports this legislation.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), joined by House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) on Thursday (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
The following article by Carolyn Y. Johnson, Reuben Fischer-Baum and Aaron Williams was posted on the Washington Post website November 2, 2017:
The GOP tax plan’s changes to deductions would hit people in blue states hard, with limits on popular tax deductions that would have the biggest effects on people with high property taxes and expensive homes.
The tax plan doubles the standard deduction to $24,000 for a married couple, meaning most people wouldn’t itemize their mortgage interest or property taxes. But for those who do, the popular mortgage interest deduction would be capped at $500,000 of the loan amount for home purchases made after Nov. 2, 2017, instead of the current $1 million cap.
The following post and podcast by David Lerman and Catalina Camia was posted on the Roll Call website October 30, 2017:
Capitol-Ink-10-30-17
Budget Tracker Extra, Episode 37
Republicans are quickly trying to pass a tax overhaul plan but indications are that obstacles are around every corner, say CQ Tax Editor Catalina Camia and Budget Editor Peter Cohn, who explain the complications facing the plan.
The following article by Amy Davidson Sorkin from the November 6, 2017 issue of the New Yorker was posted on their website October 30, 2017:
Even after the Senator spoke, his colleagues went on as if being accused of selling out the Republic for personal gain were nothing out of the ordinary.
President Donald Trump and Former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price arrive in the Capitol to meet with House Republicans on March 21.
When Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, explained why he had chosen to denounce President Donald Trump from the Senate floor last Tuesday afternoon as being “dangerous to a democracy,” he cited the moment, in 1954, when Joseph Welch, a lawyer representing the Army in the Army-McCarthy hearings, confronted Senator Joseph McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin. In an op-ed for the Washington Post, titled “Enough,” Flake recalled how Welch’s plain language—“Have you no sense of decency, sir?”—seemed to break the spell of McCarthyism. He had hoped to do something similar.
There are parallels in the two events, in that both McCarthy and Trump seem to have bewitched members of their party with a promise of power, coupled with a fear of being the next target, whether of a hearing or of a tweet. (And the man seated next to McCarthy during the hearings, Roy Cohn, became Trump’s mentor.) But what was particularly powerful about the Welch moment was that he was rejecting an offer of complicity from McCarthy. The Senator had just announced, on national television, that a lawyer in Welch’s firm had once belonged to a left-leaning legal organization, and added that he assumed that Welch hadn’t known. Welch had known, and he said so without hesitation. By contrast, when Flake finished speaking, it was clear that, despite the force of his rhetoric, the spell had not been broken. The G.O.P. still has not come close to addressing its complicity problem.
The following article by Jim Tankersley was posted on the New York Times website October 29, 2017:
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, left, the ranking member on the Finance Committee, and other senators met with President Trump at the White House this month. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Republicans will pitch their tax bill this week as a gift to the middle class, but Democrats will call it a Trojan horse: a windfall for big business and the rich dressed as a tax cut for workers.
The tensions over who will benefit from the sweeping tax rewrite were on display during an hourlong meeting last week between President Trump and Senate Finance Committee members. Democrats who attended, including many whose states Mr. Trump won, said the president agreed with every point raised on the subject of tax cuts for the middle class. At the end of the meeting, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon told Mr. Trump that the tax bill Republicans were drafting would not deliver on his promises to the middle class and would instead benefit corporations and high earners.
The following article by Patricia Cohen was posted on the New York Times website October 28, 2017:
Three out of four Americans say they worry about having enough money to get through retirement, and 45 percent have not saved anything for it. Credit Alex Wroblewski/The New York Times
When the benefits adviser Ted Benna first thought up a new type of employee savings plan in 1980, the client he created it for rejected the idea as too risky. After all, no one had previously used the unremarkable section of the tax code called 401(k) to defer paying taxes on money that rank-and-file workers set aside for retirement.
So Mr. Benna decided to try it out at his own workplace, Johnson Companies, a small consulting firm outside Philadelphia.
Without intending to, Mr. Benna set off a revolution. Nearly 40 years later, 401(k) accounts are the most common employer-sponsored retirement plans and a raft on which millions of Americans hope to float through retirement.
Suddenly, though, they are also at the center of a battle around the tax overhaul promised by President Trump and Republican leaders in Congress. A proposal to slash the amount of money workers can put in tax-deferred retirement accounts set off alarms among savers and members of the financial services industry, who contend that limiting the tax break would discourage contributions to 401(k) plans. Continue reading “Limit on 401(k) Savings? It’s About Paying for Tax Cuts”
