Keep calling Susan Collins but let’s also be prepared for the next stanza here in case she caves.
The GOP plans to have its new tax bill go into effect on January 1 2018, not 2019. That means the next fiscal year will be massively fucked up for millions of people if the bill passes.
Establishment media will try to ignore all the headaches this causes for regular Americans. We can’t. Be ready to be on the lookout for the problems it creates and to broadcast these problems as widely as possible. We’ll be doing a lot if it here on BJ, I can tell you that.
If these scumbags pass this shitty bill, we’re going to shove it up their ass or nail them to it and leave them to rot by the side of the Apian Way, your choice of metaphor.
This is one case where I don’t wish a motherfucker would, but if a motherfucker does, a motherfucker’s going to pay bigly.
Update. Also this:
Top Senate Democrats called on Republicans to slow the progress of their sweeping tax bill Wednesday, hours after a Democrat’s stunning win in a special Senate election in conservative Alabama.
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) and other Democrats said that Doug Jones should be seated in the Senate before the legislation moves forward.
[….]“It would be wrong for Senate Republicans to jam though this tax bill” without allowing Jones to vote, Schumer said. “That’s exactly what Republicans argued when Scott Brown was elected in 2010. . . . What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and what’s good for the gander is good for the goose.”
Update update. Also this:
A new Quinnipiac poll finds American voters disapprove of the pending Republican tax plan by a wide margin, 55% to 26%, and 43% say they are less likely to vote for a U.S. Senator or Congressperson who supports the plan.
lamh36
I see from reporting that there is a tax deal b/t the House and the Senate negotiators
Yarrow
@lamh36: Just caught that on CNN. Just because there’s a deal between the negotiators, that doesn’t necessarily mean they have the votes, do they?
schrodingers_cat
So does this have to pass in both chambers?
Doug!
@schrodingers_cat:
Yes
Tom
Doug – in your 4th paragraph you pose an “either-or” choice that’s not necessary. Why don’t we just nail them to it while shoving it up their asses and leaving them by the Appian (sp) Way. By the way, why the Appian Way in particular?
Yarrow
Rubio sees all those new voters from Puerto Rico in Florida.
TenguPhule
What do you mean metaphor?
schrodingers_cat
Shitty Rs will not rest with their non-stop shit show even for one day. Bastards.
TenguPhule
@schrodingers_cat: Yes. They fucked up both sides.
TenguPhule
@lamh36: Not yet. Still quibbling over details.
Chyron HR
Fifty-one senators and 90% of GOP representatives VOTED for this, even if it doesn’t become law. Shove it up their ass regardless.
Doug!
@Tom:
That’s where the Romans did their public crucifictions
tractarian
I think it is absolutely possible that 3 GOP senators refuse to go along with the conference bill.
Roger Moore
The important point is less about broadcasting them and more about letting the people who suffer from those headaches know who to blame for them. Somebody who has a migraine doesn’t need you to tell them how bad it feels; they need to know what to do to make it stop.
TenguPhule
Fuck, they did.
sukabi
How is that even possible, legally or logistically? Implementing a new budget a year before it would be normally implemented, in a matter of days (if it passes) would seem to be impossible…every agency, department and contracting entity would have days to reprogram their accounting programs…
Train wreck doesn’t begin to describe what would happen…not to mention if it’s legally ok to throw out current budget for piece of crap coming down the pike.
germy
Joe Falco
I don’t wish one would as well. We shouldn’t have to depend on the shitiness of our current or future state of affairs to get people out to vote. Alabama and the rest of the nation certainly don’t need an alleged child molestor in office to gin up voter turnout for 2018, and I’m glad it didn’t have to come to that.
I’ll do my part to tell my Georgian shitheels to do something decent, and prepare to get out every vote with or without the whole country falling apart around me.
TenguPhule
Its a tax bill, not a budget.
Roger Moore
@Tom:
That’s where they crucified Spartacus’s army.
Humdog
I was reading today of the cuts to programs that help children, in addition to the lapsing of CHIP. Cutting funds that help localities educate kids with special needs, cutting food support for kids, cutting other health spending on children. Also read that the $40 billion or so cut to Medicare required by Paygo next year will be concentrated on cuts to disabled people. These are such cruel cuts to what should be the most sympathetic groups, it takes my breath away. The open cruelty to the vulnerable is what has driven me to vomit since the election last year. They truly have given up on even the fig leaves of decency they used to use.
It is as if they never will fear a voter backlash, much less judgement of the god they say they serve better than us degenerates in the Democratic Party.
I have never felt such hate for them and every fucker who has voted for this passel of shitheads. Vote D for decency indeed.
Yarrow
Wow. They really are rushing this.
laura
@Humdog:
I have never felt such hate for them and every fucker who has voted for this passel of shitheads. Vote D for decency indeed.
Come sit by me, we have a lot in common
MaryL
This actually seems like not a huge number, especially considering that a lot, if not most, of those people probably weren’t gonna vote Republican anyway. I mean, pretty much everything Republicans have done over the past couple decades has made me less likely to vote for them, but I was never particularly inclined to do so.
Seth Owen
Among all the disasters looming and executed that are swirling about the Trump regime, I think the tax shenanigans are not too stress inducing.
Not to say it’s unimportant or that it’s not awful. It is. But nothing they propose to do or undo cannot be redone or undone in return. Plus it’s a certainty that whatever they do will be botched, will almost certainly not work as intended and provides self-evidently bad press. They are not even trying to hide it anymore. They have no mandate at all and yet they legislate as if they are coming off a series of landslides.
I don’t understand the politics behind it, frankly, unless it’s the politics of desperation — Kamikaze attacks. They know that this is now, or never, for their entire political worldview. Every trend is running against them and they only have the power they have due to exceptional circumstances that are transient and not replicable.
Ksmiami
@Humdog: now I just shun Republicans and I want the gop to die. They are all craven sociopaths
ByRookorByCrook
The problem with undoing all they do, is it saps time and political capital just to back to where we were. Everything we can fight to prevent is a chance to work for something better in the future.
Emerald
@Seth Owen:
The politics only work if the Rs either believe or know that there will not be free and fair elections in the future.
But I think last night’s results are going to give at least some of them pause. There was clear voter suppression in Alabama yesterday, but we overcame it. That has to scare some of them at least.
Or, they’re all sure of some nice wingnut welfare in the future.
randy khan
So, back to the phones, everyone.
dedc79
That’s so all the bankers in the cabinet who left their cush jobs and sold some assets to clear conflicts sometime during the last year will still benefit from the tax breaks.
Major Major Major Major
@Seth Owen: yep, the really bad stuff doesn’t come until the tax cuts for humans expire in eight years. Even the tens of billions of dollars in magical mystery Medicare cuts that the bill supposes for next year will have to be passed through regular, filibuster-able order.
Humdog
@Major Major Major Major: Are you sure about this? I thought the cuts were automatic because of Paygo and thought the Sec. of HHS was already on record that he was gonna cut disability. I hope I am wrong and you are correct.
Jeffro
It’d be nice if 3 GOP senators would come to their senses and/or put their country ahead of their party and vote down this bill, but whatever. We really couldn’t find a better way to define the modern GOP than by them passing this bill without a single Democratic vote. Go for it, GOP! It’s less popular than previous tax INCREASES, geniuses!!
Major Major Major Major
@Humdog: ah, you are right and I am wrong.
TenguPhule
@Seth Owen:
Three years of this tax not a real plan and there’s gonna be anarchy.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major:
Three years. They start 2021.
TenguPhule
And Heath Insurance Death Spirals will kick off in 2019 under this tax abomination.
Major Major Major Major
@TenguPhule: link?
MisterForkbeard
@tractarian: Especially after the Doug Jones election.
Though maybe they’ll take it the opposite way – that they’re all fucked anyway, so let’s get our awful stuff in NOW.
Shana
@tractarian: Or Luther Strange could vote the way Doug Jones would if they refuse to seat him in time.
Hahahahahaha I crack myself up sometimes.
karensky
@Chyron HR: Amen
Jeffro
@Seth Owen:
Exactly right. If all it takes is simple majorities and party-line votes, then hey GOP, no problem. We’ll pass tax “reform” so amazingly progressive that it undoes all of this garbage and then some. Free college for students whose families make under $100,000 a year? DONE. CHIP renewed? DONE. And how about a couple additional % points’ worth of higher rates on the top 10%, just so we have some money to REALLY play around with?
Jeffro
@Jeffro: Oh and I forgot: we’ll repeal blue-state penalties and replace them with wealth taxes (not just at death, but annually) and Wall Street transaction taxes too.
Major Major Major Major
@Jeffro: let’s throw in a land value tax too.
Humdog
Jeffry and Major*4, you think the thrill I get thinking of your new tax proposals is the same feeling Grover Norquist et al get?
rikyrah
26%
TWENTY-SIX PERCENT?
The crazyfication factor is REAL.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: What is 26%
J R in WV
@Tom:
The Appian Way is the road beside which people found guilty of treason were crucified in Roman times. I wouldn’t be surprised if some were impaled instead of nailed up, I don’t know that level of detail about Roman executions off hand.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
There is an entire post in BJ History that explains that the theoretical bottom for the GOPers is 27%. This is the 27% that would vote for Satan, as long as Satan had an ‘R’ on the ballot next to his name.
So, for anything of the GOP to get lower than 27% – it means that it’s lower than the crazyfication factor – that’s how insane it is.
Major Major Major Major
@Humdog: the same, only opposite.
John
Can anyone explain to me what happened with the 100%+ marginal rate for high-earning service passthroughs?
Schlemazel
@Roger Moore:
Not just Sparticus, the Apian Way was a major road into town and the Romans wanted travelers to be aware not to screw around in Rome. It was common practice
John
@Jeffro:
I really enjoy being the target of everyone “beneath” me on the income scale.
I’m a 0.2 percenter and my taxes are going way, way up because of this debacle.
I don’t mind taxes if they are going to something useful, like a genuine middle-class tax break, health care, infrastructure, even paying down the debt. I very much mind having money siphoned out of my pocket to give to the ultra wealthy.
Schlemazel
@J R in WV:
Typically they had scaffolding erected along the roads that were permanent. The condemned we’re tied to a wood planks and the plank was hoisted up and hung on the scaffolding.
This would have been how it was done throughout the empire. The big cross thing would have been time consuming and more expensive so probably not done. There had been a large uprising in Jerusalem and record show scaffolding was erected on every road into town and it went on for long distances.
BTW death could take days and is thought to be suffocation. Poisoned wine and a stab that pirferated the diaphragm would have been a welcome speeding up of the process
Doug!
@John:
That pass through thing was very strange. They somehow managed to screw people from almost every income group.
James E. Powell
@Yarrow:
Rubio and other Republicans wanna-bes see Trump not running for re-election. For whatever reasons, but mostly because he won’t win the nomination again if mainstream Republicans challenge him.
John
@Doug!:
That’s a really hefty screwing. If I understand it correctly it makes working beyond a certain point actually pointless.
J R in WV
@Schlemazel:
I wasn’t aware they maintained scaffolding to use to hoist victims up on, but was aware of the rest of your detail. Thanks though for sharing with everyone.
The more we know about Republican plans to emulate Roman political mores the better off we are!! OK, this last is a little bit tongue in cheek, but only a little bit.
different-church-lady
Anyone left who thinks they still give a shit about voters? They’re just looking for as much donor money as they can get before the train goes off the cliff.
Mnemosyne
@Humdog:
I’m not sure if it’s that or if it’s what Gin & Tacos said today — they all know they’re getting fired next year, so they’re stuffing office supplies in their pockets and sabotaging the office equipment before they make their escape.
Aleta
Saw on twitter that Collins is not supporting the Dems on waiting for Jones to be seated before the tax vote. Not verified. Not surprising, but something to mention in calls.
Edmund dantes
I’m confused. I heard they had lowered top rates even more in conference but no corresponding how they paid for it. How does the new conference bill pass through reconciliation if true? It needs to be below the 1.5 trillion limit in the budget act and neutral 10 years out.
catclub
@Edmund dantes: They did raise the minimum corporate tax. Of course, if the corporate AMT goes away then all the math changes.@John: Whatever happened to that ‘extra high rate for super wealthy’? it is gone. Instead, lower rate for the super wealthy, and I have no idea if the AMT is in or out.
If the conference bill matches the senate version then all the individual rates kick back up in 2026. If not, then it should fail reconciliation. should