What Could Go Wrong?

The House passed the Murder-Suicide Tax Bill after a whole hour of debate, while protesters were removed from the gallery. I watched a bit of coverage on MSNBC this afternoon, and various Republican talking heads were gleefully talking about the lower payroll taxes most working Americans would see starting in 2018.

I take it they think this is going to help them in the 2018 midterms. The worst of the effects may not hit people until 2019; between now and the midterms things may not be disrupted that much; people may decide it’s not that bad. On the other hand, the paycheck difference most people will see won’t be big enough to make any damn bleeping difference in their lives, so they may not feel all that grateful for it, either.

It’s also the case that a lot of people’s taxes will go up because of many deductions that were eliminated. Not all of those people are poor and working class; it may hit the pretty-well-off professional class pretty hard, actually.

But the bill kills the individual mandate beginning in 2019, which is going to wreak havoc in the health insurance markets.  Premiums were going way up in 2018 anyway, thanks mostly to Trump, in ways that could impact everyone’s insurance. The couple of bucks taken off each paycheck is likely to be offset by a big increase in insurance premiums.

Here’s something fishy — “The bill would move from the current worldwide tax system, in which income earned abroad is taxed in the United States, to a territorial system in which only domestic profits would be taxed.” What the bleep?

One of the guest talking heads on MSNBC said that people don’t resent the rich doing well as long as the rich have earned it, which is kind of the catch. I don’t think people are seeing the rich earning it. They are seeing the rich rigging the system for it. And people do tend to resent that.