I, for one, won’t support a $3.5 trillion bill, or anywhere near that without greater clarity.
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin in Friday’s Wall Street Journal
The important words in his op-ed are ‘one’, ‘anywhere near’, and ‘greater clarity’. Nancy Pelosi needs every Democrat vote to win with VP Kamala Harris tie breaker to pass the biggest spending bill in history. Manchin does not have a Democrat co-author to his article. I wonder if he has a food taster?
No doubt the Democrats are hoping to complete this Trojan Horse during the September recess and then ram it through in October. We can be sure Pelosi’s idea of greater clarity has to do with Manchin’s re-election chances rather than any details on her latest ‘we have to pass it to find out what’s in it’ project.
Here are a few highlights readers may not have heard.
1. It is the largest tax increase in 50 years.
2. It raises corporate taxes by one-third from 21% to 28%. Trump’s decrease from 35% to 21% fueled the lowest unemployment numbers in decades. With ten million unfilled jobs, expect more unemployment ahead.
3. Corporations don’t pay taxes. They pass them on via slimmer services or product at the same price or simply hike prices.
4. The Tax Foundation estimates this will be a overall federal-state tax rate of 32.34%, the highest of the OECD and Group of Seven.
5. West Texas energy producers are clearly a target. The elimination of various deductions will make exploration and transportation of crude products more expensive. If you like $3 gasoline, brace for higher still.
6. And here’s a lulu. The bill requires females at age 18 to register for the draft. There has been no draft since the Viet Nam War and the military is far better for that. Recall Nicole Gee’s post just before she was killed, I Love My Job.
7. A Medicare expansion is in the bill.
8. It eliminates ‘stepped up basis’ which has allowed farm and ranch families to pass property to their heirs. How will they pay the taxes, sell the farm?
9. Bernie Sanders gets his wish for free community college.
10. And there are lots of goodies for the Green New Deal.
11. Democrats will strike down existing right-to-work laws which deny unions compulsory membership. Those laws helped birth the Sun Belt boom of the South.
It is hard to see how this will ‘stimulate the economy’. Prepare for a repeat of the slowest recovery ever under Obama.
Progressive feminists, your destiny calls. Taliban 2.0 has already shot a musician dead and forbid girls to attend school past the sixth grade. Let’s call on the female one-percenters to fly to Afghanistan to explain modern feminism to the Taliban. My list for the Magnificent Seven includes Jane Fonda, Susan Sarandon, AOC, Joy Behar, Lynn Cheney (in memory of your Dad demanding we go to the Mid East), Whoopi Goldberg, and Ilhan Omar. Surely Ted Turner will provide his jet for the occasion.
