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Rinse and repeat. Takes one red Senate seat away for as long as he lives. Let's hope he lives moore and moore and moore.
Linking Tax reform and the Insurance mandate can only mean two things.
- Thread starter Rockport Zebra
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Rinse and repeat. Takes one red Senate seat away for as long as he lives. Let's hope he lives moore and moore and moore.
You libs and RINOs just don't get it. The GOP including the healthcare insurance mandate in their tax reform package isn't about denying people access to healthcare. It's because tax cuts are so powerful they actually make people healthier. Some people say that those 11-13 million people losing their health insurance won't even need it because they'll be so incredibly healthy thanks to the immense power of these really beautiful tax cuts. Believe me. These are the best tax cuts.
Technical point: The Senate can't refuse to seat him. It's true Congress has pretty much free rein over it's own membership, but there is exactly one area they don't: qualifications for taking office. So long as he meets the age, citizenship and residency requirements, they have to seat him.
Now, after they seat him, they can expel him, of course. But that means hearings, and maybe dragging things out, and he's serving this whole time. If they are scared of looking like they are refusing the will of Alabama voters, I have to think that kicking a serving Senator out hangs as a much darker specter. I'm not as convinced as some of you that the Senate will actually follow through with that, especially as it creeps closer to election time. I would not be surprised if, when all is said and done, they simply censure him.
I think expulsion would be difficult, but there is a saving grace for the GOP. They would only need 19 votes. No way a Democrat votes no on that issue. The specter would certainly slow down the senate from other work.
Dems won't push too hard....Moore will be the gift that keeps on giving all next year to them.
Trump may benefit too, by not looking like the most unfit office holder in DC.
Constitution say anything about castration?
For a senator or POTUS?
That might sound sexist, but back then it wasn't...
I discussed the issue in your first paragraph in another post. I don't think it's clear whether "qualifications" means just the objective criteria, or does it also include suitability to be a member of the senate. I think this is an arguable and open question. Do you have something to suggest it has been resolved?
True, no Democrat could possibly vote against expulsion. I still think it becomes harder and harder to gather those 19 votes as the year goes on.
Moore is down double digits in a poll out today. So, hopefully, what to do with him if he's elected will become a moot discussion.
Powell v. McCormack. SCOTUS declared unambiguously that neither house can add to the list of qualifications set out in Article I, and if a duly elected person meets those qualifications, he must be seated.
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1968/138
That would be best, but polls are all over the place. Moore was up 6 yesterday, down 12 today...what do you call it when every poll is an outlier?
Frank Luntz added about that poll, “Several sources who reviewed the poll results said it also tested how Attorney General Jeff Sessions would fare as a write-in candidate, and the results were not favorable.”
The polls released last night were favorable to Moore, it will be interesting to see if there has been a massive shift, or if this poll is an outlier.
Volatile. And I suspect that is what describes this race. Until Trump came back from his tape, I would have assumed once a politician lost his supporters over this type of issue they would never regain them.
But this has to be the first poll after a full news day of the attempted rape/yearbook allegations.....along with the local reporting about him being banned from the mall.
Need a few more days to see where this is headed....but I always expected it to be fairly close even before this stuff started, as he's so extremely polarizing.
We've veered way off tax discussions....but this is a big defection. This is also a fascinating article....and you can tell that Johnson knows what he's talking about here. He also has some revolutionary ideas:
To eliminate their double taxation, Mr. Johnson proposes treating corporations like pass-through businesses. They would pay no corporate tax and their profits would be taxed in the hands of their shareholders at individual rates, just as pass-through income is today. Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) has discussed ideas heading in that direction but hasn’t gained traction among other Republicans.
To make the process more efficient, corporations would withhold 25% of their profits as tax their shareholders owe, just as they withhold tax their employees owe, and send it to the Treasury. Shareholders would be responsible for paying any additional tax they owe. Mr. Johnson would also eliminate various corporate tax breaks and the ability of corporations to defer tax on foreign profits.
Equalizing treatment for the two types of entities would have implications for how much revenue the government raises. Mr. Johnson said he can’t fully explore the effects because the nonpartisan staff on the Joint Committee on Taxation won’t evaluate his plan. JCT prioritizes requests from the tax-writing committees, especially the chairmen.
To make the process more efficient, corporations would withhold 25% of their profits as tax their shareholders owe, just as they withhold tax their employees owe, and send it to the Treasury. Shareholders would be responsible for paying any additional tax they owe. Mr. Johnson would also eliminate various corporate tax breaks and the ability of corporations to defer tax on foreign profits.
Equalizing treatment for the two types of entities would have implications for how much revenue the government raises. Mr. Johnson said he can’t fully explore the effects because the nonpartisan staff on the Joint Committee on Taxation won’t evaluate his plan. JCT prioritizes requests from the tax-writing committees, especially the chairmen.
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I doubt it. Probably a three day poll. We should get cleaner polls after this weekend.
But we are talking an NRSC internal, here, so that's a pretty big deal.
Any detail on why? I read the Hill write-up, an it was pretty vague. "They know what they did wrong" kind of thing.
Can you read the WSJ article...he is flat pissed. And I don't see them winning his vote back.
Another site said he wants more given on pass-through businesses. The article also noted he made a big deal of being a no on ACA repeal, but then voted yes (ie, a negotiating ploy).
Negotiate to what, though? His ideas he wants is a radical transformation. And it actually sounds pretty legit to me.
Thanks. The trial and appellate courts made all the holdings that I think are important and SCOTUS rejected all of them. I thought the SCOTUS discussion about "arising under the constitution" for a justiciable case was interesting. Everything congress does arises under the constitution.
Couple of questions about expulsion. Why elaborate hearings? I don't think an anything beyond rudimentary due process is required, especially since no conviction is involved and a member has no property interest in the job. Also, I don't think expulsion can happen for conduct preceding membership--especially in light of Powell. That would be an end-run around Powell.
I feel like Cosmo Kramer -- I've been suggesting that for eons. So what's a guy got to do to get such ideas considered for legislation? Get elected to the US Senate or somethin?
I used to bring this up back when people were kvetching about Warren Buffett's secretary paying a higher average tax rate than he does. The only reason that's "true" is because Buffett's holdings are virtually all in C corporations -- and, as such, those companies' earnings are taxed at the corporate level and don't pass-through to his personal tax return. So, if C Corporations were taxed the same way as S Corporations, I'm sure that Buffett would have one of the highest tax rates of any American taxpayer. But such a change wouldn't be huge so far as tax revenues go. It would only change whose name is on the check.
I'm sure the reason this delineation was made was logistical. S Corps can have no more than 100 shareholders. Trying to pass-through corporate income of firms with tens of thousands of shareholders' 1040s would be a logistical nightmare -- particularly with people bouncing in and out of equity stakes like square-dancers doing the do-si-do.
But it's possible that technology has made that a whole lot easier to do in today's world. If that's the case, then I support Sen. Johnson's idea....or, I should say, he supports mine!
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Yeah, the logistics for publicly traded companies would be impossible, I'd think.
That's a strange reason to oppose tax reform. There probably are hundreds of tax code provisions and maybe thousands of regulations that treat corporations, partnerships, limited partnerships, Sub S corporations, and sole proprietorships differently. Some advantage one entity and others advantage other entities. No big deal. That's what business lawyers and CPA's are for. FWIW, I think the way the reforms treat passthrough business entities, (Sub S, partnerships, etc.) was creative. But I have a lot of questions about how this would be applied without people abusing the system.
Isn't the entire point of "reform" to greatly reduce the complexities and the different treatments of businesses?
Your argument seems good for CPAs and tax lawyers....but not much else.
The House bill reportedly includes some "safeguards" against this. But, best I can tell, the safeguards mostly amount to a limit of how much pass-through income gets the lower rate -- depending on the nature of one's business.
They are going to have to do something to prevent people from just converting their compensation into business income to take advantage of the lower tax rates. I'm not sure either bill does it very well yet.
That's why I think that Johnson might be onto something.
That said, it seems like a good opportunity to once again suggest that we'd be wise to tax all forms of income the same -- preferably with a single rate. It seems far better to remove the incentive to avoid taxes with this kind of sleight of hand than to delude ourselves into thinking we can police it.
I dunno, man, you're talking about wading into some really tricky waters. Powell was easy, because the Constitution specifies the qualifications for holding office, so SCOTUS had a clear text to interpret, and a good argument that it wasn't violating any separation of powers issues. But the Constitution doesn't specify what someone can be expelled for. And the location of the expulsion clause (Section 5 on rules) suggests those reasons are being left to Congress. In fact, I believe the Powell decision implicitly says the same.
That said, there have to be some limits. If a Republican supermajority, for example, voted to expel every Democrat, that would be a problem (they wouldn't, of course, because there would be no need to). As for expelling a member for something they did before taking office, as far as I can tell, it hasn't happened yet. William Blount was expelled for a conspiracy that started before he took office, but it was apparently ongoing.
This isn't going to help:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/15/vot...can-tax-reform-plan-quinnipiac-poll-says.html
That's a fair point, unfortunately things are not that simple. We have corporations, subsidiary corporations, holding companies, brother/sister corporations, corporate members of LLC's and 100's of other variations on the entity themes. There are legitimate reasons for multiple entities other than dealing with the internal revenue code, but there also is no doubt that some fooling around with multiple entities is intended to obtain tax benefits.
Cue the "% of people who pay income tax" discussion.
Both parties have long been pushing people off the income tax rolls....so certainly a difficult "sell" to the broad public.
There are various reasons why both the House and Senate tax reform bills shouldn't pass.
But at the top of the list is the fact that both of them leave the treatment of Carried Interest -- which is among the most indefensible parts of the existing tax code -- intact.
Generally speaking, I think the changes made to corporate taxes are a step in the right direction -- though I agree with Sen. Johnson that they need to do a better job narrowing the disparities between large and small corporate entities. But, other than that, both of these bills suck.
But at the top of the list is the fact that both of them leave the treatment of Carried Interest -- which is among the most indefensible parts of the existing tax code -- intact.
Generally speaking, I think the changes made to corporate taxes are a step in the right direction -- though I agree with Sen. Johnson that they need to do a better job narrowing the disparities between large and small corporate entities. But, other than that, both of these bills suck.
I'll be getting a very large tax cut under both bills...much to my surprise. Can't really make the argument that I need it. But I'll happily take it and proceed to invest damn near all of it.
Well, I would too. But that's neither here nor there.
Trump campaigned on doing away with the carried interest ripoff. And, even among those opposing the bill, it's getting precious little attention.
I'd be the first to defend it if it was at all defensible. Generally speaking, I prefer lower taxes to higher ones. But there's no good argument why that form of income deserves preferential treatment over other forms of income.
Hell, they're scrambling for dollars to make the CBO analysis check out. That seems like some pretty low-hanging fruit. But I guess it just goes to show how much influence those people have over our policymakers.
I agree on that entirely. Would be interested to see if it comes up further down the pike as this moves through the Senate.
Good find.
I guess extending the holding requirement is better than the status quo. But they need to get rid of it entirely.
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