Funny, but mostly true.
Personally I would have liked to see Mr. Wharton come up with something revenue neutral that wouldn't blow up our already insurmountable deficit. Of course, he didn't write the bill...I doubt if the President has the aptitude or where with all to even attempt to author a piece of legislation.
So who writes bills? It certainly isn't McConnell, or Pelosi, or Ryan...or anyone else in Congress either. These people do not even READ pieces of legislation, let alone write them. Underlings might help, but mostly it's lobbyists and very smart people hired by lobbying firms. And they do this to insure the legislation serves their, and not our, best interests. Add in some pork or provision intended to get enough votes for passage, then scream to the hills how the minuscule benefit to the common man is a victory for the party..all the while knowing the fat cats are going to rake it in (and keep the political donations pouring in as a result). They live on a "quid pro quo" basis.
Personally, I would like to see an across the board 5% decrease in funding for every department in government. Show me a department head who cannot reduce spending, or find 5% of funds squandered, and I'll show you someone who should be fired. Add a five year cap on tax free donations to a 401k and you might have a revenue neutral bill that would pass.
It would be nice to eliminate a few hundred pages of the tax code, but that would require someone...anyone to actually read the tax code. Why does it have to be sooo painfully long and full of legal jargon? Is it so no one will read it....and why does it take literally years to audit a rich persons tax returns? Flatten the tax, eliminate so many deductions and get everyone to pay their fair share and you have my vote.
The tax bill itself, which will eventually be passed in both houses is a 600 page behemoth...a labyrinth of political jargon and bullshit designed to help corporations and the well to do while offering crumbs to you and me.
The worst part: eliminating the provision of Obamacare mandating everyone get some sort of health insurance. You see health insurance is a sort of ponzi scheme where we need the healthy to pay into a fund so the least healthy of us can be covered for the horrendous cost of hospitalization and after care.
Is this unfair? Maybe...but the healthy should take solace in the fact that when they get sick, there will be a new crop of healthy people who are paying in to cover their expenses. But the entire system will collapse if we don't continuously get in a healthy crop of investors / insured.
Taking thirteen million people off from healthcare roles is not wise or even humane. But it is what I have come to expect from Congress..and especially the conservatives.
And it is going to pass. It will pass with the usual crap about if they line the pockets of the rich and corporations, whose pockets are already burgeoning with profits...will somehow invest the tax saving windfall into additional labor, or higher wages. Ridiculous blather that seems to work time and time again. Ridiculous because it has never worked ever.
History shows time and time again that the Republican "trickle down" theory never works. What's more.. our economy always works better with a liberal in charge. Who was the last President to balance a budget? Bill Clinton. Everyone else blew up the deficit...including Obama (although in his defense, he created stimulus packages to avoid a Bush snowball of an economy headed for a huge great depression).
I certainly do not know every portion of the tax bill (I wonder who does?), and an not an economic scholar...but it seems to me that this bill is being rushed through so no one can read it before the vote, and for the simple fact that the Trump administration needed a win. They needed a win because they haven't done anything of use...except play golf and fire people from their cabinet.
So, here it is...the 2017 tax bill...destined to pass, with its 600 pages no one will read, up to and including the handwritten provisions in the margins...hastily added to ensure they get the votes needed for passage. Because it is such a piece of crap they couldn't even get their majority members to vote for it without a piece of self serving pork added to it.
And the deficit goes up $1.7 TRILLION DOLLARS as a result of this "win." Good job, Mr. Wharton...if you really even graduated from that prestigious business school at all. The way I see it...your graduation from Wharton is on the same bar of plausibility as a drug and alcohol addicted George Bush graduating from Yale...doubtful at best.
But that is the way it goes in our great country...and in
"The World According to Kimba." Thanks for reading.
