Republicans Just Found Out They Made An Embarrassing Mistake In Their Back-Room Rush To Pass Tax Bill
NATALIE DICKINSON
PUBLISHED ON DECEMBER 4, 2017
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In their haste to get their tax bill through the Senate before the American people could figure out just what a staggering heist was being perpetrated against them, Mitch McConnell and the Republican Partyaccidentally ended up sabotaging their own bill.
On Friday, the Senate GOP rewrote the entire bill and rammed it through without any analysis, without a single hearing, and apparently without anyone having actually read the piece of legislation that will reshape America as we know it.
They were in such a rush that they accidentally killed some of their wealthy donors’ desired tax breaks.
Thanks to the reconciliation rules, the tax bill can only raise the deficit by $1.5 trillion, so during the last minute addition of amendments from their lobbyists on K-street and the frenzied rewrite session, they removed the corporate alternative minimum tax then added it back in – but forgot to reduce it. NYMag’s Eric Levitz explains:
The GOP had originally intended to abolish the AMT. But on Friday, with the clock running out — and money running short — Senate Republicans put the AMT back into their bill. Unfortunately for McConnell, they forgot to lower the AMT after doing so.
This is a big problem. The Senate bill brings the normal corporate rate down to 20 percent — while leaving the alternative minimum rate at … 20 percent. The legislation would still allow corporations to claim a wide variety of tax credits and deductions — it just renders all them completely worthless. Companies can either take no deductions, and pay a 20 percent rate — or take lots of deductions … and pay a 20 percent rate.
Levitz explains that this crucial mistake has two major implications – the first being that the Senate is almost certain to have to vote on it again, meaning there’s still a chance for us to kill it completely, especially if Doug Jones wins the Alabama Senate race next week and replaces Republican Luther Strange.
Secondly, the Republicans are going to have to go back to the negotiating table with themselves in order to find a new way to pay for this monstrosity, including perhaps including some of the more appalling House GOP ideas for paying for it, like taxing graduate students.
The Republicans wanted to rush this through before anyone could find out what exactly they had in store for our nation’s deficit and what hardships they were going to dump on the working class – and their appalling disregard for the democratic process of governance appears to have backfired in poetic fashion.
NATALIE DICKINSON
PUBLISHED ON DECEMBER 4, 2017
000
In their haste to get their tax bill through the Senate before the American people could figure out just what a staggering heist was being perpetrated against them, Mitch McConnell and the Republican Partyaccidentally ended up sabotaging their own bill.
On Friday, the Senate GOP rewrote the entire bill and rammed it through without any analysis, without a single hearing, and apparently without anyone having actually read the piece of legislation that will reshape America as we know it.
They were in such a rush that they accidentally killed some of their wealthy donors’ desired tax breaks.
Thanks to the reconciliation rules, the tax bill can only raise the deficit by $1.5 trillion, so during the last minute addition of amendments from their lobbyists on K-street and the frenzied rewrite session, they removed the corporate alternative minimum tax then added it back in – but forgot to reduce it. NYMag’s Eric Levitz explains:
The GOP had originally intended to abolish the AMT. But on Friday, with the clock running out — and money running short — Senate Republicans put the AMT back into their bill. Unfortunately for McConnell, they forgot to lower the AMT after doing so.
This is a big problem. The Senate bill brings the normal corporate rate down to 20 percent — while leaving the alternative minimum rate at … 20 percent. The legislation would still allow corporations to claim a wide variety of tax credits and deductions — it just renders all them completely worthless. Companies can either take no deductions, and pay a 20 percent rate — or take lots of deductions … and pay a 20 percent rate.
Levitz explains that this crucial mistake has two major implications – the first being that the Senate is almost certain to have to vote on it again, meaning there’s still a chance for us to kill it completely, especially if Doug Jones wins the Alabama Senate race next week and replaces Republican Luther Strange.
Secondly, the Republicans are going to have to go back to the negotiating table with themselves in order to find a new way to pay for this monstrosity, including perhaps including some of the more appalling House GOP ideas for paying for it, like taxing graduate students.
The Republicans wanted to rush this through before anyone could find out what exactly they had in store for our nation’s deficit and what hardships they were going to dump on the working class – and their appalling disregard for the democratic process of governance appears to have backfired in poetic fashion.
