Trillions for Billionaires

Taxing Celebration:  Though they had to take a mulligan to make it official, to no one’s surprise the House passed the tax bill yesterday.  Once signed by Trump, the tax bill will be the law of the land, at least until some future date when the Democrats take over and do their best to start unwinding the whole thing.  Instead of calling it the  “To provide for reconciliation pursuant to titles II and V of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2018,” the new unwieldly name mandated by the Senate’s parliamentarian, Bernie Sanders suggested calling it what it really is :  Trillions for Billionaires.  In celebration, House and Senate Republicans were bussed over to the White House for one of those wonderful moments where they all got to tell Trump how very awesome he is and how they couldn’t have done it without him, although its been reported that they kept him as far away from their negotiation process as they could to prevent him from mucking up the outcome.  Trump had quite a day, earlier in the morning at the last Cabinet meeting of the year, speaking on behalf of the attendees, the obsequious Mike Pence told him how great he was and how lucky they all were to bask in his glow. With those accolades still ringing in his ears, Trump took the mic at the tax celebration to brag about his huge accomplishment, once again throwing in a few of his usual lies. He said that the tax cuts were the biggest ever, they are not, in fact they trail far behind the bipartisan Reagan era tax cuts and even behind some implemented by LBJ.  He was particularly excited to claim that, by eliminating the individual health insurance mandate, the bill had just killed Obamacare; it certainly hasn’t helped, but given its new found popularity Obamacare still lives.  Lastly, he stuck with his assertion that he will not benefit from the tax cuts, a bold faced lie, especially in light of the last minute addition benefiting real estate investors.  Trump isn’t in a hurry to actually sign the tax bill into law. He is likely to wait until after the ball drops on New Year’s to avoid triggering $120 billion in automatic cuts to a raft of programs including Medicare.  The program cuts will be required by law because of the impact that the tax law will have on the deficit.  By waiting until 2018, the program cuts won’t be triggered until 2019, giving Republicans a chance to either come up with a way to prevent them, or at the very least, delay them long enough to avoid having their implementation further impact the outcome of the 2018 midterms.  Personally, I think it would be appropriate for Trump to sign the bill amidst the gilded halls of Mar a Lago, surrounded by the bill’s beneficiaries, especially the New Year’s eves revelers who’ve paid close to $1000 a piece to celebrate with him, all while the unfunded Children’s Health Insurance Plan goes belly up.

Government Funding:  The legislators have one more thing to do before they rush to the airport for their trips home to the hinterland, they have to pass a continuing funding resolution to keep the government lights on. House Speaker Ryan is finding his Republican colleagues as difficult to manage as ever.  The current plan is to pass another one of those short term resolutions, one that does little more than fund the government through January 19.  Democrats won’t be on board since none of their priorities will be included in the bill.   At the same time legislators will be asked to vote on a separate disaster relief bill, one that was amended last night to include more funding for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands because Democratic votes will be necessary for disaster relief.  Even with Democratic support, its not clear that the disaster relief plan will make it through the Senate until after the New Year because the same group of Senators who just voted for a deficit busting tax bill are concerned about the costs associated with turning the lights on in Puerto Rico.  Despite the promise given to Senator Collins, no one plans to stick around to work out a deal to fund the Obamacare insurance subsidy payments, an outcome that she actually agreed to yesterday. Though nothing will be done for the dreamers by year end, Chief of Staff Kelly has been meeting with a group of senators, negotiating a compromise solution that will include some border security funding and possible policy changes.  The intent is to present a DACA bill early in January.

Nefarious Moves:  A splinter group of Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, has been quietly engaging in a rear guard action intended to derail the Mueller investigation.  Led by Trump stooge Devon Nunes, the titular head of the committee who is supposed to be keeping his distance from the Russia investigation, they have been surreptitiously trying to build a case claiming that there has been “corruption and conspiracy” at the upper levels of federal law enforcement ranks.  Their focus is the Steele dossier, the document that helped guide some aspects of the Mueller investigation.  The parallel investigation has been kept so secret that Democrat and Ranking Member Adam Schiff knew nothing about it.  Concern about this combined with fears that despite his claims to the contrary, Trump is seriously considering ways to fire Mueller before he hands down any more indictments may explain why the FBI Agents Association, FBIAA, released an unusual statement yesterday saying that “Attacks on our character and demeaning comments will not deter Agents from continuing to do what we have always done—dedicate our lives to protecting the American people.”  It may also explain why the co-Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee,  Virginia Senator Mark Warner, hardly a firebrand, took to the Senate floor yesterday to issue a blistering statement criticizing “irresponsible and reckless attacks on Special Counsel Mueller.”  He warned Trump that firing Mueller would lead to a constitutional crisis.  Somehow I think that crisis is right around the corner.

Oh Jerusalem:  Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem, Israel’s de facto capital, as Israel’s official capital is going about as well as could be expected. The US has already vetoed a security council resolution condemning the move.  Now Trump has threated to withhold “billions” of dollars of aid from countries which vote in favor of a planned UN General Assembly resolution rejecting the recognition.  For her part UN Ambassador Nikki Haley wrote to a large number of those members warning that she will be “taking names” of countries that vote in favor of the resolution.  The title of Trump’s next book will probably not be the Art of Diplomacy, although on the other hand maybe it will, since Trump probably thinks he is showing the world what real diplomacy looks like.  Vice President Pence’s planned trip to Israel and Egypt which was supposed to take place this week but was postponed so that he could be around for the tax bill vote and victory lap has now been rescheduled to January 14. So far Palestinian leader Abbas still plans to boycott their previously planned meeting though the delay will give Kushner’s peace squad some additional time to persuade him to change his mind.  The Palestinian Day of Rage planned to coincide with Pence’s originally planned Tuesday arrival went on without him.

One More Thing:  It looks like that Democrat who won the key delegate seat in Virginia didn’t win after all. In a really screwy scenario, Republicans have convinced a Judicial panel that one additional questionable ballot should be included even though that ballot doesn’t include a vote for the Republican candidate.  The judges have bought off on their argument that since the voter in question voted for Republicans everywhere else on the ballot, he or she must have intended to vote for the Republican candidate for state delegate too.  Absent an additional full vote count, the outcome of the election will be decided by a coin flip.  Every vote counts, sometimes.