Choose your poison

President Donald Trump, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Speaker Paul Ryan are in an all-out sprint.  They're scared shitless their Republican Party will lose control of one or both houses of Congress within a year.  Their wealthy benefactors....the deep pockets that fund their political careers....are going to be pissed beyond belief if they don't get what they paid for were promised. 

While polls say Democrats are not at all well liked, Republicans are even deeper in the hole.  A flip of just 2 Senate seats and a handful in the House of Representatives to the Democrats and the GOP leaders will be asking for more knuckle-dragging body guards.  They won't want to have to face Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Banks, Big Insurance, Big Ag, and all the others and swim with the sharks. 

By next summer the mid-term election campaigning will be in full swing, so if they're to deliver on their promises, they'll have to do it before then.  The GOP will be doing their damnedest to ram something through pronto, forget thoroughness or public hearings.  Committee members will get 5 minutes each to ask questions, then it's vote time. *Wham...Bam...SOLD...SOLD...SOLD*  And of course President Trump will sign whatever Congress puts in front of him because THEY are the ones who will vote on whether to impeach/convict him and ruin his Mother-Of-All ego trips.

What should we expect between now and then? A push to finalize a tax cut in the House that will please the GOP donors, another run at getting the government out of the health insurance equation, squashing Medicaid as much as possible (we have too many poor people, don'tcha know), and maybe even squeezing Medicare and Social Security dry, too. 

I'm guessing they have 8 months to make it all happen.  By August our politicians will all be back home, looking us in the eye and telling us how much they love us.  I think the Democrats will have a pretty good chance of winning one house of Congress, spoiling the Republican's party.  Further down the road in 2020, at the rate the GOP is digging its own grave, the Democrats just might gain control of all 3 branches of government.  Then it will be their turn to rape and pillage us and glad hand their special interests.

Another day in Washington.

S

Sorry to burst your bubble, but....

"You, go get more lipstick....lots of it.  We'll need to spiff up this pig if we have any hope of pimping it to the American people."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has a dozen or so of his hand picked buddies locked in a back room as I write, trying to put together a new healthcare bill they can ram down our throats before we wake up.  When asked by some in his own party when they could see the bill, and how long they would have to review it before a vote was called, he said "a day".  Geez....what a railroad job!

"But....but....ObamaCare....the Democrats foisted that pile on us back in '10.  They...."  I don't care.  All I care about is now.  "Two wrongs don't make a right", as my mama used to say.  Truth is, they don't even care about healthcare.  Their goal is to gut healthcare so as to save enough money to fund their beloved giant tax cut.  That's it, bottom line.

Anyone who thinks they can put together a plan that will preserve the "pre-existing condition" and "no lifetime cap" provisions that everyone seems to like about ObamaCare, while giving us equal or better coverage, with equal or lower deductibles and co-pays, all for dramatically lower premiums, is delusional!  Nothing is free!

Everyone seems to think you have to either back ObamaCare or a derivative, or the Republican alternative.  That's it....pick one.  Both sides are just tippy-toeing around the fact that any meaningful change will require some seriously major changes, changes likely to step on the toes of some extreeeeemly powerful, wealthy interests who want to prevent that at all costs.  Until they are willing to piss off some of these special interests, nothing will change.  And politicians simply don't piss off those who are pulling their strings.  Never.

S

Screwed again, and we didn't even get a kiss

So our politicians tell us that we're broke....way past broke, actually....because of all the old-timers now signing up for their Medicare and Social Security, which, by the way, they PAID for over their working lives.  (And if the tax rate was insufficient to keep those trust funds properly topped off, whose fault is that?)

But wait....now we find out that a cool $76 BILLION DOLLARS in special-interest tax credits was included in the recent "fiscal cliff" legislation.  Lobbyists such as the firm headed by former Senator's John Breaux (D-LA) and Trent Lott (R-MS), representing companies like General Electric and Citigroup, secured for them an extension to the provision that allows multinational corporations to defer US taxes by moving profits into offshore financial subsidiaries.  (Their profits are all credited to subsidiaries in low-tax countries like Luxembourg where they might have nothing more than a PO Box.  They then pay Luxembourg taxes, not US taxes.)

Known as the "active financing exception", this is the tool that GE (and quite a few others, too) uses to avoid paying nearly all US corporate taxes.  Also blessed with sweetheart tax breaks were companies like rum distiller Diageo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, the American Wind Energy Association and the Motion Picture Association of America. (I checked and Park Place Custom Homes didn't get crap!)

Obviously their shareholders are ecstatic, but how is the taxpayer's interest served here?  

This scam was one the Obama administration insisted be included, and the Republicans feebly and quietly objected to, then voted "aye" anyway.  ("I'll vote for yours if you'll vote for mine?")  I wonder if we went back over the past 30 years or so and looked very carefully how much of our $16 TRILLION DOLLAR debt could be attributed to these kinds of giveaways?

No....no kiss, or dinner, or a movie, or even cab fare home.  Just a plain old fashioned screwing.  "I feel so....so used."

S

Politicians gone wild

I've nearly finished reading Do Not Ask What Good We Do:  Inside the U.S. House of Representatives by Robert Draper.  For a political junkie such as myself it is a fascinating look at how the lower house of Congress actually works.  


I found it to be very fairly balanced, praising several in both parties for earnestly trying to serve our country, but also revealing many in both parties for what they are:  crooked power hungry scum bags looking out only for their own political careers.  I mean to the point of being willing to throw the entire country under the bus if they have to to get themselves re-elected.  Our current crop of freshmen representatives are a particularly uninformed group. 


The bottom line is this:  IMO, If EITHER party ever gains control of the House of Representatives AND the Senate AND the Presidency, WE'RE SCREWED!  I'm convinced that a gridlocked Congress, bad as that might be, would serve us better than getting flattened by the runaway Special Interest Express of one-party rule.  You can't imagine how dangerous these people are!


Our wise Founding Fathers gave us the concept of "checks and balances" for a reason.  Whether between branches of government or houses of Congress, it's a good concept.


S

"A billion here, a billion there....before you know it you're talking real money!"

I believe any thinking American would agree that our government spends too much money.  These days Washington is just out of control, period.  The question today isn't "SHOULD we cut spending?" but "WHAT should we cut?"


Republicans want to cut back on all the social programs on the books, but they'll fight tooth and nail to protect the loopholes granted to their business special interest buddies.  Not surprisingly, the Democrats want to do just the opposite.  Both parties want to balance the budget on the other guy's back.


Here's my idea:  Do we even know the dollar value of all the tax loopholes, subsidies, "favors", etc that are liberally sprinkled all through our 75,000 page(?) tax code and various other "back door" appropriations?  I suggest we commission someone (the GAO?...maybe a Big 6 accounting firm?) to go through everything page-by-page, identify each, put a dollar value on each, explain how each is justified, and how it would affect the economy/taxpayers if it went away.  We know about some of the high profile ones such as subsidies for the oil companies, big pharma, etc, but we tend to forget things like home mortgage interest deductions and union dues deductions.  I wanna know about ALL of 'em.  How much do you think they would add up to?  $100 billion a year?  $500 billion a year?  A TRILLION dollars a  year?


Do any politicians have the guts to propose something like this?  No...didn't think so.  They all have their special interests they're covering for, and the LAST thing the special interests want is for the people to find out how badly they're getting screwed.


I'll bet it would be a real eye opener.  Then I bet we could make a helluva dent in our deficit!


S