Republicans had been in control of Congress mostly for years now, but with the huge election win in 2016, they essentially have control of the White House, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court. It has been said that Democrats have not been in worse shape in around 90 years, if ever.
And so, you had to expect that they would try to take advantage of that.
Yet, up to this point, they have had no major legislative victories to show for it. Trump wanted to introduce term limits for Congress, which is one of the very few things that I agree with him on. But it was not even introduced before Congress. Trump tried to get his border wall against Mexico paid for, since he had failed to force Mexico to pay for it like he promised during the campaign, but he failed with this, too. And, of course, the big one: failing to repeal and replace Obamacare, although Trump forced an executive action that, for all intents and purposes, effectively ended Obamacare.
However, it is not fully dead yet. People did not get the message, as record numbers of people signed up for the Affordable Care Act.
And now, with remarkably little to show for their efforts through almost one full year in power, Congress and the White House desperately want a major legislative win under their belt, so that they can boast of success.
Enter the tax overhaul, which if passed, would be the first major tax overhaul in three decades - Since Reagan!
And wouldn't you know it - included in the tax bill is a measure that would finally gut Obamacare once and for all, which we knew was what Republicans wanted.
President Trump stated that he wanted to cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, and there are other nuggets for major corporations and the ultra wealthy in this tax bill. And Congress wants to please the president here, so all Republicans seem to be aggressively pining for this bill.
It does not matter to them that a vast majority of Americans disapprove of this tax reform - less than 25 percent! Meanwhile, a whopping 52 percent outright disapprove of the proposed tax bill. It does not matter to them that millions will lose their health insurance. It does not matter to them that, once again, the wealthiest Americans and big corporations would be the biggest winners under these proposed tax reforms.
Once again, Republicans are being criticized for essentially advancing a transparently elitist agenda, with tax reforms and laws that would predominately benefit the wealthiest Americans.
This time, they are starting to show impatience towards these criticisms. Senator Orrin Hatch got into a heated exchange with Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, just a couple of days ago. He claimed that he himself came from a lower middle class background, and has been working to defend the interests of working class Americans throughout his entire career.
And he basically suggested that the Democrats kept playing that card because it was a political winner, although he also claimed that it simply was not true.
Here specifically is their exchange from a couple of days ago (taken from The Hill):
“I’ve been here working my whole stinking career for people who don’t have a chance," Hatch said. "And I really resent anybody who says I’m just doing this for the rich. Give me a break."
And so, you had to expect that they would try to take advantage of that.
Yet, up to this point, they have had no major legislative victories to show for it. Trump wanted to introduce term limits for Congress, which is one of the very few things that I agree with him on. But it was not even introduced before Congress. Trump tried to get his border wall against Mexico paid for, since he had failed to force Mexico to pay for it like he promised during the campaign, but he failed with this, too. And, of course, the big one: failing to repeal and replace Obamacare, although Trump forced an executive action that, for all intents and purposes, effectively ended Obamacare.
However, it is not fully dead yet. People did not get the message, as record numbers of people signed up for the Affordable Care Act.
And now, with remarkably little to show for their efforts through almost one full year in power, Congress and the White House desperately want a major legislative win under their belt, so that they can boast of success.
Enter the tax overhaul, which if passed, would be the first major tax overhaul in three decades - Since Reagan!
And wouldn't you know it - included in the tax bill is a measure that would finally gut Obamacare once and for all, which we knew was what Republicans wanted.
President Trump stated that he wanted to cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent, and there are other nuggets for major corporations and the ultra wealthy in this tax bill. And Congress wants to please the president here, so all Republicans seem to be aggressively pining for this bill.
It does not matter to them that a vast majority of Americans disapprove of this tax reform - less than 25 percent! Meanwhile, a whopping 52 percent outright disapprove of the proposed tax bill. It does not matter to them that millions will lose their health insurance. It does not matter to them that, once again, the wealthiest Americans and big corporations would be the biggest winners under these proposed tax reforms.
Once again, Republicans are being criticized for essentially advancing a transparently elitist agenda, with tax reforms and laws that would predominately benefit the wealthiest Americans.
This time, they are starting to show impatience towards these criticisms. Senator Orrin Hatch got into a heated exchange with Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, just a couple of days ago. He claimed that he himself came from a lower middle class background, and has been working to defend the interests of working class Americans throughout his entire career.
And he basically suggested that the Democrats kept playing that card because it was a political winner, although he also claimed that it simply was not true.
Here specifically is their exchange from a couple of days ago (taken from The Hill):
“I’ve been here working my whole stinking career for people who don’t have a chance," Hatch said. "And I really resent anybody who says I’m just doing this for the rich. Give me a break."
“I think you guys just overplay that all the time and it gets old, frankly you ought to quit,” he continued.
“I get kind of sick and tired of it. ... It’s a nice political play, but it’s not true.”
Brown quickly responded, saying that he gets “sick and tired of the richest people in this country getting richer and richer.”
And later:
And later:
“Listen, I’ve honored you by allowing you to spout off here but what you said was not right, that’s all I’m saying,” Hatch said. “I come from the lower-middle class originally, we didn’t have anything. So don’t spew that stuff on me, I get real tired of that crap.”
Hatch said that if Republicans and Democrats worked together “we could pull this country out of every mess it’s in.” “
Well let’s start with CHIP,” Brown interjected, referring to the Children’s Health Insurance Program that Congress failed to reauthorize last month.
“I’m not starting with CHIP. I’ve done it for years,” Hatch said of working on bipartisan bills. “I’ve got more bills passed than everybody on this committee put together, and they’ve been passed for the benefit of people in this country.”
“And now all I can say, I like you personally very much, but this bullcrap you guys throw out here really gets old after a while. And to do it right at the end of this, it’s just not right,” he said. “It takes a lot to get me worked up like this.”
Maybe it does take a lot to get him worked up like this. Who knows?
But one thing is for sure - Orrin Hatch has supported plenty of measures that wound up benefiting the rich more than everyone else in the past, and we can see the results of this concretely today. If he wants to stop being criticized for this, then what he needs to do is quite simple: stop supporting these measures. Stop pretending to get outraged at serious criticisms of this kind of legislation, and start working to limit the greed of corporations and the ultra-wealthy which, by the way, Hatch is now a part of, regardless of his past upbringing.
And that goes for all Republicans, because they are wrong. Indeed, over and over again, they keep pushing aggressively for measures that would almost exclusively benefit the wealthiest Americans, and essentially stick it to the rest of us.
This proposed tax reform bill has already passed the House, although the real test, we know, will be the Senate. If it passes, it will be yet one more disastrous policy change that benefits the wealthy, at the expense of the rest of us. I think that it's well past the time for us to show Orrin Hatch, and other elitist politicians, what real anger is.
Senators Hatch, Brown have heated exchange on GOP tax plan BY JACQUELINE THOMSEN - 11/17/17
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