1) Bob Corker. Throughout his deficit posturing, I told you to ignore him. There was no such thing as a true deficit hawk among the Republicans, I said. Time and again, I wrote that I would believe it when I saw it. When the Senate voted, Corker cast the lone Republican vote against the GOP tax bill. I recanted my criticism of Corker.
Oops. As it turns out, Corker just wanted to get in one, minor feel-good moment before retirement, after a lifetime of hypocrisy. After all his posturing, he's going to vote for the House-Senate reconciled bill, which is still a deficit-increasing bill without the trigger that the Senate parliamentarian ruled out of compliance with the Byrd rule.
At this point, I have to ask-- would Corker have voted no had he been pivotal?
I'm gonna say no at this point. What is he doing? I'm not sure. I really don't see what he has to gain by this. The GOP is going to pass a plan with or without him. He's retiring. Policy isn't at stake. Reelection isn't at stake, so he doesn't have to worry about either a primary or a general election. By criticizing Trump, he's already toxic to a lot of the GOP anyway, and one vote won't win anyone back. I don't see what he's doing. So, I revert to political science research. Retiring legislators tend to reveal their sincere preferences through their voting patterns. As research by John Lott (in many papers, with many coauthors) shows, retiring legislators don't tend to change their voting patterns very much, meaning that their votes tend to be sincere all along. Which vote, though, is his sincere preference?
Um...
All I can say is... any Republican who claims to be a deficit-hawk? Revert to what I was originally saying about Corker. In the end, he caved. They all do, eventually. Republican deficit-hawks don't exist. Any Republican who claims to be a deficit-hawk is... a Republican. You can't be both. Period. Not anymore. Not in the modern GOP.
I recant my earlier statement in which I expressed a tiny bit of respect for Bob Corker. I will add that Corker is Trump's biggest critic in the GOP. I keep telling you that there is precisely zero chance of Trump being impeached, or otherwise having his party turn on him. ZERO.
Republicans are not allowed to have either principles or spines. Trump is absolutely, 100% safe from having his party turn on him. I don't even have to talk about the anti-Mueller backlash to get to this point. Just look at this little twerp, Corker...
2) The individual mandate. Way back at the start of 2017, I got this one wrong. Here's the thing: repealing the individual mandate without repealing the regulations on pre-existing conditions is indisputably stupid, and every nose-breathing Republican knows it. It is an especially dangerous form of sabotage. And they know it. My initial expectation, because of that, was that an individual mandate repeal would be kept off the agenda in the first place. Why? Because once it made it onto the agenda, it would be really hard to stop given the politics of the GOP. You don't give a live grenade to children. You keep it locked away because once that shit gets out, it's goin' boom.
What happened? My live grenade analogy presumed the existence of a responsible adult somewhere in the model. McConnell got frustrated with failure after failure. So, he took out that grenade with "skinny repeal." Collins, Murkowski and McCain stopped him.
But, they're all a bunch of fucking children, and all three really want to watch that grenade go off. Once the grenade has been removed from its lock box, which McConnell did last summer, it's going off. The urge among those children to see an earth-shattering-kaboom was just overwhelming. And as soon as it was even suggested that they put it into the tax bill, the result was inevitable. I called that one.
Once the grenade was removed from the lock box, the result was inevitable. Where I went wrong was the assumption that someone would prevent it from being removed from that lock box. But, there just aren't any adults in that party. And all three Republicans who voted to stop the grenade from going off last summer want to see the boom now.
Basic point: this is all about the structure of the agenda. Agendas dictate outcomes. Political science 101.
3) McCain. Stop praising McCain. He is a preening hypocrite. Everyone fell all over themselves when he voted with Collins and Murkowski to kill "skinny repeal" last summer, after giving a big speech about the importance of bipartisanship and regular order. You know what that showboating asshat is doing now? He's voting for a piece of legislation that is 100% partisan that went through the exact same process (i.e. nothing resembling regular order) which includes the exact same provision-- "skinny repeal." Whatever commitment he claimed to have to bipartisanship is bullshit. Whatever commitment he claimed to have to process is bullshit. He is voting to pass the dangerous sabotage provision he voted to kill. Fuck John McCain. Fuck his hypocritical posturing. Stop listening to him. Stop praising him. Stop talking about what a "maverick" he is. He is nothing but a fraud, and he has never been anything but a fraud.
Charles fucking Keating. That is the truth of John McCain. He is a crook, and every bit of his Mr. Clean, good-government act is a part of an attempt to get people to forget his involvement with the Keating 5. I don't forget these things. Neither should you. This is why I never let up on John McCain.
Fuck you, John McCain. If you seriously believed in "regular order," bipartisanship or the rest of that speech you gave amid "skinny repeal," you, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski would have put a stop to this "process."
4) On that topic, stop trying to praise "moderates." This is not a "moderate" bill. This is a corporate tax cut, surrounded by shit. Collins and Murkwoski are voting for it. They are also nullifying their votes against skinny repeal. Why? Because at the end of the day, what unifies the GOP is the concept of cutting taxes.
But, as we have learned, even Grover fucking Norquist is OK with raising taxes on... certain people, as long as the right people get their tax cuts.
Critical concept from economics: The axiom of revealed preferences. People reveal what they really want through their actions.
Collins and Murkowski are fine with repealing the individual mandate while leaving the pre-existing conditions regulations in place, sabotage though it is. They are fine with making a mess of the tax code, just as long as corporations get a major tax cut.
I repeat: I can make a case for a corporate tax cut! I'm not some Bernie Sanders commie twit who wants to tear down the private sector because money is EEEEVIL. What I can't make a case for is this monstrosity of a bill, filled with loopholes that only make the tax code more exploitable.
This is what it means to be a moderate. Fuck moderates. Stop praising moderates.
5) Permanent versus temporary tax cuts. Is there such a thing as a permanent tax cut? The last time taxes were raised through an act of Congress was 1993, when Democrats had unified control. They did it through budget reconciliation with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. No Republican votes necessary, although it was unpopular, and cost some Democrats their seats (like Majorie Margolies-Mezvinsky). But, they raised individual tax rates. I kind of wonder whether or not the Democrats would be willing to use budget reconciliation to raise the corporate tax rates back up, the next time they get unified control... Since this bill is a deficit-increasing bill, the Democrats could actually use budget reconciliation to undo everything on a "permanent" basis, with none of those 10-year expiration dates. Then, there's the fact that the income tax provisions in the bill expire. The next time Democrats get control, they can mess with those. After the 2008 election, the Democrats screwed up. The Bush tax cuts from 2001 were set to expire at the end of 2010. The Democrats wanted the "middle class" tax cuts made permanent, and the "upper class" tax cuts to expire, although definitions of such things are funny. Rather than doing it on their own when they had the votes, they waited, not just until after Scott Brown won the special election in Massachusetts, but until after the 2010 election. They sat around with their thumbs up their asses until the GOP had maximum leverage. Will they do the same thing the next time they get unified control, or will they start messing with the tax code themselves?
I don't know. The Democrats are pretty fucking stupid, and scared of their own shadows when it comes to the accusation of raising taxes. Maybe getting burned on the Bush tax cuts will have taught them a lesson. Then again, time passes, turnover means those in office won't have been there to remember, and there are currently idiots trying to kick out Nancy Pelosi-- one of the smartest legislative tacticians in modern history.
Basic point: there's no such thing as a truly permanent tax cut. However, Democrats are constrained by their own stupidity and cowardice.
At this point, I wouldn't even hazard a guess at how Democrats would respond the next time they get unified control.
Takeaway point: Republicans got unified control of government. They cut taxes. On whom? Corporations. Why? Axiom of revealed preferences.
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