Looking on the bright side

One Big Beautiful Bill passes the House, will probably get even worse in the Senate, but...

Imagine that you asked for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and I made one for you. Further imagine that I went out into my yard and found a piece of dog poop that I had missed in my pooper-scooping activities yesterday — just a small piece — and put it on the sandwich. Sure, it’s still mostly a PB&J by weight but to you it’s just a $h*t sandwich and you wouldn’t even think of taking a bit.

That is how I see One Big Beautiful Bill. It’s a bill with provisions (like no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, deductibility of some auto loan interest) that only Bernie Sanders should like but they’re being pushed on Republicans by a president who has never been a fiscal conservative and has built businesses by taking on massive debt and then frequently defaulting on the debt leaving others holding the bag. In this case, he’s leaving our children holding the bag. As I’ve said, there’s even less purpose to the existence of the GOP than there has been for a while now if they’re going to intentionally increase the deficit and debt. We MUST aggressively cut spending, especially the growth of entitlements, and Trump has explicitly campaigned against that.

That said, given that this seems likely to pass in some form not wildly different (though more likely a bit worse than a bit better) than the current form, I want to take a moment to look on the bright side:

The bill does something that’s absolutely necessary: it extends the current individual tax rates.

It’s important to note that the “scoring” for the bill which shows it significantly increasing the deficit begins with the assumption that the 2017 tax reform (for individual rates, at least) expires and that this is a brand-new tax cut. For most of us it feels like a continuation of policy and not quite right to score it that way. Much of the scored deficit increase comes from that. However, even adjusting for that, this bill does not cut nearly enough spending.

Democrats continue to lie about these rates representing a tax break for “the rich.” Two comments on that: First, it’s a lie. A significant majority of Americans got a tax cut from the 2017 reforms and almost everyone who didn’t was a high-income resident of a high-tax state.

Even the NY Times admitted it, and it’s interesting to note that Democrat citizens are believing the lies of their politicians, or at least they were at the time. Might be a harder sell for the politicians now that people have actually had a few years of seeing actual lower taxes.

Face It: You (Probably) Got a Tax Cut - The New York Times

Second, it’s terrible policy to give “tax cuts” to people who don’t pay taxes. The last thing this country needs is MORE people who earn income but pay no income tax. They have no incentive to care about the size and cost of government; they’ll just keep voting for politicians who promise to steal from others and give some of the loot to them. First, we should eliminate “tax brackets” except for maybe one low bracket for very-low earners and one higher bracket for everybody else, and then we should ensure that all tax cuts go to people in direct proportion to how much they pay in tax.

For example, if one person pays $250,000 in tax and another person pays $2,500 in tax, any tax cut should reduce their payments by the same percentage, not the same amount. If the lower-income person gets a 2% tax cut and owes $50 less then the higher-income person should also get a 2% cut and owe $5,000 less. And all but the poorest people (even people who are net tax recipients rather than payers) should have to pay something, even if it’s $10, on Tax Day, to be reminded that government has a cost and that they have to pay some of it. (Again, even if they are net recipients of stolen goods, i.e. if the earnings of others are taken and given to them (a standard part of Democrats’ vote-buying strategy that Republicans are engaging in now with the tips and overtime nonsense) they should be reminded that providing a national defense, along with the many unconstitutional things our government does, is not free.)

Other likely good news about the bill: Because the provisions ending taxes on tips and overtime are expensive (and stupid) they will almost certainly be phased out, though the timing will probably be such that they’ll disappear just after the next presidential election. Perhaps the same with deductibility of loans for (US-made) cars, as if the gov’t should be encouraging people to take on even more debt than they already do with a mortgage deduction. At that point, it’s possible (although maybe not probable) that Congress will refuse to extend them. Probably it will depend on how dire our nation’s fiscal situation is at that time.

There are beneficial energy provisions in the bill that I haven’t fully digested yet, but appear to include making it easier to deal with NEPA, which has been used as a weapon by anti-everything radical environmental groups, as well as penalties for protesters who cause economic harm by stopping energy-related development (though I wonder if that provision will be deemed constitutional when inevitably challenged), and streamlining permitting. It’s unclear to me at the moment what remains from this prior analysis but I suspect most or all of it does, and this is good stuff: Western Energy Alliance Lauds the House Natural Resources’ Reconciliation Bill - Western Energy Alliance

And finally (for today) here’s one piece of unexpected good news: Trump's "Big, Beautiful Bill" Eliminates the Excise Tax of Suppressors – National Gun Trusts I can’t wait to see the left’s freakout (not to be confused with a Diddy “freak off”) when they see this one. This is long overdue. Most people who comment, especially negatively, about suppressors have absolutely no idea what they’re talking about. In quite a few countries, you can just walk into a store (could even be a hardware store, not a gun store) and buy one. They are devices to protect hearing, not James Bond-style “silencers” and with the possible exception of shooting a .22 caliber pistol with subsonic ammunition, a suppressor does not “silence” a gun; it just makes it less likely to damage your hearing. I’m told that in some places it’s considered rude to shoot without one.