Like I've said before, for some people nothing the Republicans or Trump does to help them will be enough. In the scenario I posted the family would get a 100% reduction in federal income tax but, still, there is room for you to complain.:doh
:roll:
You cannot hold up one very specific hypothetical, where you're ignoring dozens of parameters, and on that basis proclaim this law is a win.
E.g. all one has to do is place your hypothetical family to New York State, and they will lose much of those gains -- as deductions for state and local taxes are dramatically curtailed.
Meanwhile, most of the law? Yeah, it doesn't help them. A family earning $60k is not helped by raising the threshold on AMT; or by creating tons of loopholes for people who can set up a pass-through for their income; or by raising the threshold on estate taxes; or by keeping the carried interest loophole (I wonder how
that one survived...), and so on.
The idea that only one side is partisan here is laughable. We spent 8 years where Obama could have said "2+2=4" in a speech, and Republicans would have vehemently disagreed with his "Socialist math."
There was a lot of potential room for compromise and bipartisan input on this tax bill. Democrats have said for some time, for example, that they were willing to clean up and simplify the corporate tax code. Instead, the Republicans did an end-run around their own demands for regular order, objections over bills that shut out the opposition, objections over bills where those voting on it didn't know what was in it, and
years of fear-mongering about the deficits. They passed the law via irregular means, deliberately shutting out Democrats, refusing to hold any public hearings, making hand-written changes at the last minute, not fully knowing what they passed or its effects, knowing full well it will balloon the deficit (and potentially using this as an excuse to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other programs).
Working with Democrats also would have made the law more sustainable, more likely to stick over time. Now that the norms have been shattered, all that's needed is a Democratic President, plus a majority of Democrats in Congress, for a grand total of 2 months, and all those tax laws can be changed again. I wonder how you'd react to a Democratic-only tax bill in 2020....
