Posted on 12/21/2017 10:53:13 AM PST by C19fan
The thing that REALLY GALLS me is that shrinking the federal monstrosity was not part of this discussion. Tax reform should never have been undertaken without shrinking the absolutely out of control central government. Nothing else much matters when that disgusting, insatiable beast eats out our substance and enslaves us.
Maybe you could explain just how something like that could be passed under "budget reconciliation" rules. Otherwise the minority in the Senate can prevent a vote by a filibuster.
Sorry, I know very little about the rules under which the House and Senate operate. All I know is Harry Reid completely ignored them whenever he wanted to promote a leftist agenda. Republicans are putatively in charge; they can change the rules to get things done. But they have no desire or intention to shrink the beast.
As I understand it, the Constitution allows for the Senate to decide what the rules are that they will operate under. There are plenty of Senators from both parties who would vote against eliminating the filibuster rule. Just because you or I may not like it (at least while we hold the majority), the Senators have been elected and have the power to set their rules. And that's just what they've done.
But they have no desire or intention to shrink the beast.
It's been this way at least since the later 1800s, and the government is going to continue to get more intrusive. You might as well get used to it. It's sort of like me accepting that I'll get cold feet running around barefoot in my backyard in Minnesota in January. Wishing it was otherwise is a pointless exercise.
With Trump in office, he'll be able to accomplish some reduction in regulations, etc, but he's only in office for a relatively short time. If you want to learn more about the growth of government and why as a rule it just keeps growing, I'd recommend reading "Crisis and Leviathan" by Robert Higgs.
“I guess all those corporate finance guys and...”
If corporate finance guys had their OWN money at risk, maybe THEY would be more conservative.
Re “Crisis and Leviathan” by Robert Higgs - thanks for the recommendation. I added it to my reading list. It has great reviews on Amazon.
Not if you buy a place of equal monetary value, & in a place like Texas or Florida you may find you get an even nicer place. Something to consider for sure.
It was an eye-opener for me. I bought the 1987 version of the book, so it was interesting thinking through how events since that time follow the same pattern. A terrorist attack in 2001 leads to intensive government spying on US citizens. A financial crisis leads to Dodd-Frank with all kinds of costly intrusive rules on businesses. A drug crisis leads to the militarization of police departments, busting down doors with no-knock warrants, and civil asset forfeiture. Buy a bottle of cough medicine and you wind up on some government list somewhere as a potential meth lab operator. Etc. Etc. It follows the same pattern because the population not only accepts it, the majority are led by the government and the media to applaud it.
For additional reading with a different perspective, showing how educated moral people can wind up willingly becoming part of a totalitarian system to the point of committing genocide, why the people most likely to willingly do it wind up in power, and how the government leads the population into not only finding it acceptable but even necessary, I found the book "The Nazi Doctors" by Robert Lifton to be enlightening. It helps a person to understand how the FBI and others in government can find it acceptable to invent the whole "Russian collusion" scenario to try to keep Trump out of office, and failing that, to try to keep him from being effective. The end justifies the means.
Your concerns about the future direction of the tax code are interesting but most folks are short-sided and will not vote against the party that increased their take home pay in 2018.
I know it is hard to believe—but this one time the “stupid party” actually made a smart call.
What we really learned this year is that the tax code is not permanent—it can be changed at any time by Congress.
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