Tropical Storm Nicholas is about 70 miles south of Port O’Connor, Texas. It’s moving fairly slow and should make landfall sometime late tonight or early tomorrow morning. Right now, it looks like it’ll hit somewhere on the middle coast of Texas around Corpus Christie, head west over Northern Louisiana, and moving on through Mississippi. It looks like it’ll stay a tropical storm but that’s bad enough, and authorities have already started putting out flood warnings in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Batten down the hatches, kids.
House Democrats lit a fire under the GOP’s ass this morning with the announcement of a unique and logical way to pay for that $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill. To wit, they’re going to undo the Trump tax breaks and raise the corporate tax rate. Right now, it’s set at 21%, the lowest it’s ever been, and Democrats want to crank it up to the outrageous 26.5%. That’s still 10 points less than it was under Bush Jr. and just half of what it was under Reagan.
This would also raise the top bracket for folks making over $400,000 and couples making $450,000 to 39.6%, basically where it was under Barrack Obama. This current round of tax goofiness is owned by the George W. Bush administration, which had the brilliant idea of cutting taxes while carrying on a two-front war. They were set to go out in 2010, but conservatives made a big hoo-hah about him raising taxes, and, yes, it was in bad faith. He set up a deal to extend them to 2012 to shut them up. The top brackets indeed raised in 2012 but the taxes for the less-then-$400,000 ($450,000) crowd were made permanent. That’s probably you, by the way.
Despite the strong economy spurred by the tax increase on the rich, even if ever so slight, Donald Trump secured his Republican bonafides by cutting taxes on those folks back in 2017 and not doing a whole lot to offset the damage the cuts would do to the rest of us. Some say it’s the reason for the sluggish economy, along with the tariff goofs and rising healthcare costs.
The tax increase plan would also do some fixing to Roth accounts, notably limiting accounts worth $10 million from making more cash off it. Overall – and this is taking a very broad shot at it, so grain of salt – this would raise the tax on the rich and wealthy, while still allowing them plenty of routes to get even richer while lifting some of the burden off the necks of people making less than 400 grand. Again, that’s probably you.
While of course this is unpopular with Republicans, it’s not a done deal among Democrats. Some are arguing about not groking the full scope of the bills and some are bucking because they’re more beholden to corporate interests despite what they say. No one’s really become the face of dissent, but them that know say House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has maybe a three-member edge if the rubber hit the road today.
We’re making no bets here at Enon Holler World Headquarters, but the money for that Buy Back Better needs to come somewhere. It should also be noted that the Trump tax cuts never had much popularity among the proles, with almost as many folks against it as for it, poll-wise. It’s a trick because raising taxes on anyone is never popular with the great unwashed but “trickle-down economics” has pretty much lost all support except for the true believers.
This is all getting cranked up, of course, and will probably take up most of the time we have leftover from COVID, infrastructure issues, results of out-of-control climate change, and the growing danger of delusional yo-yos who’re protesting hospitals not using ivermectin on a COVID patient. So, good luck with that.
Dear Y'all 