Do you support making the middle-class tax cuts permanent?

A great deal of criticism is levied at the tax bill because the middle-class cuts expire in ten years. I see that criticism here, just about every day.

On January 8th, Ted Cruz introduced legislation to make them permanent, and called upon Democrats who criticized the expiration of the cuts to join him.

Do you support making them permanent?

No, because I do not support any tax plan that ignores economic reality.

I am a bit biased being in the middle class but voted yes.

Going to be funny seeing Bernie's reaction to this given how he complained about them not being permanent.

OrphanSlug said:

No, because I do not support any tax plan that ignores economic reality.

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any tax plan ignores economic reality.... because we don't have a tax revenue problem, we have a spending problem

Harshaw said:

A great deal of criticism is levied at the tax bill because the middle-class cuts expire in ten years. I see that criticism here, just about every day.

On January 8th, Ted Cruz introduced legislation to make them permanent, and called upon Democrats who criticized the expiration of the cuts to join him.

Do you support making them permanent?

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None of the tax cuts should have been made permanent at this time, the Nation has a lot of upcoming expenses and we are deeply in debt and the deficit is rising. Take care of our expenses and debt first, then pass a Balanced Budget, then tax cuts for all, and all permanent.

I see the notion of "making tax cuts permanent" to be nonsense because any future Congress can remove that "permanent tax cut" by simply passing another law. It's nothing more than political posturing designed to make politicians look good and to fool the useful idiots.

celticwar17 said:

any tax plan ignores economic reality.... because we don't have a tax revenue problem, we have a spending problem

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You are referring to fiscal reality. Said another way, the condition of tax revenue in a given year to spending in a given year.

I am talking about the condition of the economy, which impacts tax revenues, based on the overall condition of our tax code. And what I mean is we create a series of problems suggesting our tax code can stay in a constant condition since our economy is cyclic.

Beside, Congress changes this frequently enough.

If it shifts the burden back to the upper 1%? Sure.

opcorn:

celticwar17 said:

any tax plan ignores economic reality.... because we don't have a tax revenue problem, we have a spending problem

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Any budget deficit is always a combination of spending and income. I would agree that we have a spending problem, however we do also have a revenue problem.

Kreton said:

..... we do also have a revenue problem.

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That will worsen as the decade ages. However, diminishing federal revenue is the main component of the intended Trump/Ryan/McConnell fiscal structure.

That self-inflicted wound serves as their casus belli to wage war on social safety-net programs such as Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid (that Trump promised he would never touch).

Mycroft said:

I see the notion of "making tax cuts permanent" to be nonsense because any future Congress can remove that "permanent tax cut" by simply passing another law. It's nothing more than political posturing designed to make politicians look good and to fool the useful idiots.

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This. It is political theater and I have no interest in that.

With adaptations for blue staters, perhaps. Will have to wait a bit before we see what other tweeks should be made.

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Rogue Valley said:

That self-inflicted wound serves as their casus belli to wage war on social safety-net programs such as Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid (that Trump promised he would never touch).

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Pretty much.

The worse news is that doing so will undermine far, far more than just the welfare state, as it were, because those individual programs touch nearly every part of our economy and infrastructure.

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Other: not likely but be patient...we'll find out.

Yes, because if nothing is going to be done to make companies pay decent wages and stop outsourcing everything to pocket more profits, then they need all the help they are going to get.

What the hell is going to happen when this generation gets older and most people are living paycheck to paycheck their entire lives, have no savings? Going to be a real horror show in this country, particularly if republicans continue to attack Medicare and Social Security. Oh, the idiots will say "they should just get a better job" like that's an option when most jobs pay these low wages

Harshaw said:

A great deal of criticism is levied at the tax bill because the middle-class cuts expire in ten years. I see that criticism here, just about every day.

On January 8th, Ted Cruz introduced legislation to make them permanent, and called upon Democrats who criticized the expiration of the cuts to join him.

Do you support making them permanent?

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Ten years is an eternity in the life of a nation. Why worry about it now? The corporate tax rates are permanent, so long as we keep the GOP in power anyway, so that businesses know what their tax liabilities and other expenses are likely to be when they expand or start up new ventures. That was what so so lacking in the Obama administration and the primary reason that the economy was so stagnant. Business does not like uncertainty in government taxes, rules, regulations. They know they have at least three years of a favorable business climate under President Trump. Even if the Democrats retake power in 2018, they can't revoke those taxes without Presidential approval. If it turns out to be the disaster they predict, they can put their own people in there in 2020 and roll back the whole thing. (But since it is already yielding such good things, would they?)

Meanwhile what is the rush on personal taxes? We have at least ten years to see how that works out for everybody. If it turns out to be a national disaster as the Democrats predict, at least they aren't permanent and there is less political blood on their hands when they do nothing as opposed to revoking a popular tax code. (Though realistically they could be rescinded tomorrow if they produced terrible results.) Maybe in ten years, if things go as well as they are going now, they may choose to take even less of the people's money.

No reason to worry about it just now. Except to shut up the snowflakes, whiners, bitchers, and haters who are screaming that tax relief for only 10 years is a disaster. Maybe that's sufficient reason to make it permanent though realistically things are permanent only until the next Congress/President.

Kal'Stang said:

opcorn:

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One thing that bugged me about the Democratic response was how they would deflate the worth of a received tax cut for middle or lower income workers by saying "it's not much."

Well, it's more, sometimes meaningfully more.

The other related thing is what gets lost--and some of this is the fault of Republicans not selling it--is the Ben Wattenberg-esque analysis. Back when the Great Society was being drafted and enacted, Wattenberg (then a speechwriter for LBJ) would say you have to make the numbers sing. What does this policy mean with the family in Scranton, Ohio (a favorite target of Ben's in the 1960s and 1970s) when they, go to the grocery store, whatever. Do they have family aspirations? What does this policy, this modest amount of help do for them?

The OMB Director tried it, but gave a bull**** benchmark of $4,000, the supposed average of the biggest breaks for the wealthy, on up to the lowest breaks or potential tax hikes for the working class.

Rubio and Lee had a shot with their proposal, but they gave in without a fight or a public argument.

The results may be surprisingly good or perhaps not. But neither Republicans who were advancing this, nor Democrats who were opposed to it, really looking at it that way.

The reason for Republicans? They explicitly said over and over again this was to please the donors who were threatening them for withholding dollars or financing primary challengers if a corporate tax cut didn't happen.

For Democrats? They felt they had to be anti-Trump, anti-Republican all the time and because they weren't included in any discussions, felt no need to do anything but be negative and focus on the party's campaign finance concerns.

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Fiddytree said:

Pretty much.

The worse news is that doing so will undermine far, far more than just the welfare state, as it were, because those individual programs touch nearly every part of our economy and infrastructure.

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Thanks. I had been wondering why I have less every time the mid(me)dle class gets a tax cut. Voting for permanence makes me queasy, so nay.

Kreton said:

Any budget deficit is always a combination of spending and income. I would agree that we have a spending problem, however we do also have a revenue problem.

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I think we have plenty of revenue to fund a government. It just has to be more efficient...

I come to this conclusion by looking at average tax revenue per capita. I think this statistic is important because it shows how much actual revenue the US government gets per person in comparison to other countries.

In 2015 the U.S. had 14.79k of revenue per person on average. This is actually slightly above the average among the 35 ish countries in this study https://data.oecd.org/tax/tax-revenue.htm. And in 2015 we were almost right in the same ballpark as Germany, they got around 15.3k per person.

Countries like the U.K., Canada, Spain, Russia, Italy.... the U.S.A get's quite a bit more revenue per person than any of them.... and some of these have much higher taxes than we do.

Countries that get higher revenue per person are countries like the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark.... and these countries debt to GPD ratio is very high

Harshaw said:

A great deal of criticism is levied at the tax bill because the middle-class cuts expire in ten years. I see that criticism here, just about every day.

On January 8th, Ted Cruz introduced legislation to make them permanent, and called upon Democrats who criticized the expiration of the cuts to join him.

Do you support making them permanent?

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Yes. I know why they made them temporary. Basically its a political time bomb(there might be a more proper name for this). Basically it can be used as ammo against the democrats if they refuse to extend or make them permanent before and when the cuts expire.

The tax cut bill should be entirely reversed this moment.

jamesrage said:

Yes. I know why they made them temporary. Basically its a political time bomb(there might be a more proper name for this). Basically it can be used as ammo against the democrats if they refuse to extend or make them permanent before and when the cuts expire.

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Nope.

It's because of the Byrd Rule, a condition of passing things via budget reconcilliation: you can only use reconciliation if the bill is "an extraneous matter" or if it will not significantly increase the federal deficits beyond a ten-year term. So while the GOP is exploding the deficits further (back up to near 1 trillion a year soon) in the next 10 years, they get to evade the Byrd rule by setting them to expire then - because then it would no longer significantly increase the deficit in years beyond the 10th.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconciliation_(United_States_Congress)#Byrd_Rule


Just about any article on the tax cut bill that addresses the temporary nature talks about this.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...ule-will-shape-u-s-tax-overhaul-quicktake-q-a

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-not-really-temporary/?utm_term=.b3e61af006d7

https://www.npr.org/2017/11/20/565297639/how-republicans-can-shoehorn-temporary-tax-cuts-in-for-good

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/14/16634200/republican-tax-reform-byrd-rule

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/...&gwh=D56BFF4F229148C5999625A41FF4225E&gwt=pay



They may want all the cuts to be permanent, but the reason they aren't has nothing to do with some clever plan to crate a wedge issue to wield against the Dems in the future. The reason is because they know perfectly well that they're just further blowing up the deficits they spent the last 8 years screaming bloody murder about so they can reward rich individuals and already cash-flush corporations.

It depends.....

In my world, the less money I put in the bank, the less money I have to do the things I need to do.

I like having good schools, roads, military, etc. These things require $$$.

If services take a nose dive, we will have to pony up the money. We cannot expect the millionaires and billionaires to help anyone but themselves.

Mr Person said:

The tax cut bill should be entirely reversed this moment.

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Why??