Posted on 11/03/2017 12:43:46 PM PDT by Kaslin
RUSH: I’ve had more time to look into this and there are parts of this thing, folks, that are so frustrating. It’s just so damn frustrating. It’s just out-of-my-mind frustrating. We run the House, we run the Senate, we have the White House — and still, it’s like we have a bunch of Republicans who don’t even have the courage to be conservative. They’ve lost their conservative ideals, ’cause they’re playing the same old game that the Democrats love to play: Class envy. They’re making a big deal out of taxing the rich; they’re holding on to the children’s health program.
Do you remember S-CHIP? The S-CHIP program was a program devised by Obama and supplementary to Obamacare. I’ll never forget it because it was paid for with the sales tax revenue from the sale of cigarettes and other tobacco products. Which prompted me, at the time, to suggest that we need to give smokers a medal, that we need to start treating smokers as heroes — and we need to encourage them to keep it up because they are paying for this new children’s health program.
Well, anyway, it ought to die; it ought to go away, what with the effort now to repeal Obamacare and downsize it, but it’s not. It’s not gonna go away. It was a program that was designed to fix a shortfall of something that happened and there wasn’t enough health insurance for poor kids so the S-CHIP program came along and addressed the problem. It didn’t work, and so now we’re adding another addendum to it or keeping this program alive, when it hasn’t justified itself. It’s an abject failure. It ought to just be punted. We have the power to do this!
Did you know, ladies and gentlemen…? I’m not gonna find any sympathy for this, but I’m gonna try to make the case anyway. There is a hidden 46% tax bracket for some Americans in the Republican tax bill — 46%. Let me tell you how this will work. Of course, this hasn’t been advertised. The Republicans are not making a big deal out of this and for obvious reasons, because they want to maintain the fiction (and that’s what it is) that the top rate will be 39.6%, and it’s not temporary. It’s a rate of 46% on a limited amount of income, but it’s the reason that it’s there that is infuriating to me.
It stems from a provision intended to help the government recover some of the benefits that lower-income taxpayers enjoy. So this new rate of 46% is there to help the government pay for tax cuts for everybody else. So the rich, in addition to not getting any tax relief — unless you want to say the death tax kicking in four years from now is tax relief. The rich are not getting a rate reduction, and in fact are having a rate increase on a portion of their income that equals a 46% tax rate, all to pay for the tax cuts elsewhere in the bill!
Sorry, folks; that’s not how conservatives think. That’s not how conservatives operate. That’s not conservative theory or ideology or policy. Conservative tax policy does not derive from, “How are we gonna pay for it?” Conservative tax policy derives from, “It’s the people’s money. They keep more of what they earn because of their hard work in earning it, and government must shrink. Government must do without.” If we are going to reduce people’s tax rates, then the objective is to actually create more revenue to Washington by expanding the economy and growing it and causing jobs to be created, creating new taxpayers.
That’s conservative tax policy. Nowhere in conservative tax policy is this idea that it has to be paid for. That is pure liberal Democrat thinking, and we are adopting it in our tax plan. Steve Moore, tax expert, Heritage Foundation. He’s considered the guru on this by some in the media. They called him up and said, “What do you know about this?” He said (summarized), “I don’t know anything about it.” He said the surcharge is news to him. “I was just in a briefing with the White House on this and they didn’t mention it. This seems kind of bizarre to me.” So here’s of how it works.
After the first $1 million in taxable income, the government would impose a 6% surcharge on every $1 earned after the first million, until it made up for the tax benefits that the rich receive from the low tax rate on the first $45,000. In other words, remember what we went through yesterday, the new rates and the 12% rate? Everybody paid 12% on the first $45,000 they earn. Well, it is thought, “That’s not fair. The rich ought not have to pay as little as 12%. That’s not right. That’s not fair. The class warfare people will not put up with that.
“The rich ought not be treated like everybody else.” Everybody in this bill, every American on the first $45,000 of taxable income, the tax rate’s 12%. But the Republicans are looking at this and saying, “That’s not fair; the rich ought not get away like that!” So, to make up for that, they have added a 6% surcharge on income above $1 million until it made up for the tax benefits that they get from the low tax rate on the first 45%. I hope I’m making this clear.
Rather than simply saying, “If you make a million or more, you don’t get any of your income taxed at 12%; we’re gonna go ahead and tax the first $45,000 of the $1 million dollars at 12%.” But we’re gonna conclude that that’s not fair. The rich ought not get that low a tax rate, and so to make up for that, we’re gonna impose a tax on the back end, and we’re gonna impose a 6% surcharge on every $1 earned after $1 million dollars until the rich have paid what they would pay if there was no 12% rate. The surcharge, in effect, will remain until the government has clawed back $12,420, which would occur at about the $1.2 million in taxable income level.
So here’s the way it’s gonna work. The rich will pay tax rates like everybody else does on the first million they earn. But because the Republicans think that it’s not fair the rich should ever pay 12% on any of their income, the rich will face a 6%… Well, “the rich.” These would be the wealthy. “The rich” are way, way out of this discussion. So once the rich earn a million and keep earning, they’re gonna pay 6% — an additional 6%.
So we’re now 45%, 46% on the next $200,000 that they earn. That will make up for what they’re not paying at a 12% rate on their first $45,000 earned. So the bottom line is, up to $1 million dollars, those people pay what everybody else pays. After $1 million dollars, they pay an additional 6% or a rate of 46% until the government’s losses are paid for — and the calculation is that that will be about $1.2 million in taxable income. At that point, the surcharge disappears and the top tax rate goes back to 39.6%. It’s called “a bubble tax.”
Fine and dandy. The reason it’s being done is what’s wrong. “The government has to pay for this somehow. We need to claw back what the rich are getting away with!” This is the way Democrats think! This is the way liberal Democrats think. This is the way demonize people: Claim some are not paying their fair share. We’ll see if this survives. There’s a lot of things… The realtors, as I predicted they’re up in arms over the whole mortgage interest deduction. So we’ll see how this falls out.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Look, I say it’s not the money, but, you know, it is. Philosophically, it’s the money. You know, all of this is being done for $50 billion? The government cannot do with $50 billion less. Meanwhile, the Republican tax reform is going to expand the refunds to people that don’t even pay taxes. You heard me right! The Republican tax plan will increase the amount of money in the form of a refund that people that don’t even pay taxes are gonna get, and I’ll tell you why it’s infuriating. All of this seems to be a suck-up to the Democrats, or else our guys don’t really believe in their own ideas in the end.
Now, look, I know Trump is a factor here too. Trump is out there saying, “People like me don’t deserve tax cuts. I’m not gonna…” And I ran through the polling data with you on what the majority of Americans think, that the rich aren’t paying enough, and I get all that. But this isn’t conservatism, and we won the election. This is not conservatism. This is not the way conservatives think. This is not a tax plan that’s gonna promote growth in the private sector, the economy. Businesses are gonna make out okay. The corporate tax rate’s good. This is halfway good, but this is just a disappointment!
Virtually te entire Republican leadership must be replaced. Their moral corruption, intellectual ignorance, and political arrogance are preventing the return to Constitutional government we voted for. The mid terms will be a blood bath for Dems and Pubbies alike.
Other than cutting Corporate taxes, this is a total CF when it comes to logical, conservative tax reform.
It’s a shell game without a pea.
It would be way better to keep the current system and add a line to reduce your otherwise tax calculation by 10%. This would give every one a tax cut rather than stir up the winner and loser pot.
Draining the swamp is going to take a long time.
It ends the AMT. it brings home money stashed abroad. It lowers business taxes and makes us more competitive
Pass this. Then primary all the RINOs so we can get to a flat tax or fair tax
Dems win by taking anything they can get. Let’s not be stupid
I am really hoping. We need to clean out the Republican crap and work on converting those State Primaries to Republican.
Not true. It ends the AMT. It ends the death tax. It helps small businesses too
Do this now. Then primary every RINO
Dems take what they can everytime they can. Let’s. Or be stupid
Looks like I wil pay more in income taxes. I did not vote for that.
OK. I’ll add the AMT and Death Tax deaths as a good thing.
Basically, if my tax doesn’t get cut, it isn’t a tax cut (and I have no idea yet what my situation will be). Pure and simple. How am I to pump up the economy w/o a tax cut?
Most never had any to begin with.
Couldn’t agree more with Rush.
Other than the reduction of corporate taxes there’s nothing in it I like.
This is more than a swamp-draining issue. This is going to require a long-term reeducation program to teach basic economics to Americans.
The fact of the matter is that a majority in this country buys into the class warfare to some degree.
Look if you can tax California and other high tax states. And million dollar home owners. Its fine. Also, education tax credits. These tax benefits cause state taxes to go up, home prices to go up, education costs to go up. There is no reason to give tax breaks on these things at the high end. It just causes prices to increase costing people more than they are saving.
If this goes through you will see state taxes go down or state the same instead of increasing. It will also stop or slow progressive taxes at the state level.
Rush is right...again.
Of course it would, but the outcry would be deafening from the Dems who would decry the fact that high income earners get a "bigger tax cut" based on dollar figures (10 percent of a bigger number is a bigger number). And since those that pay NO taxes can't get 10 percent of zero, they would say it's a tax cut for the rich (the upper 50 percent in this case).
Of course if it were a tax increase they'd say the rich should get at least the percentage tax increase of the "middle class" -- meaning the upper 50 percent would pay much higher dollar amount increases versus the lower income brackets. And repetition of this narrative is how we ended up with the top 20 percent of income earners paying 95 percent of all federal taxes.
If you make less than $100K and live out side of a high tax state your taxes will go down. Even if you are in a high tax state your taxes will probably go down if you make less than $100K.
And remember they are taking in $1.5 Trillion less. So, as long as the Government takes in less, and the big tax states get hurt, then we are ok. Yes people are going to lose some tax breaks and gain others. But its a big win overall. You will see education costs go done. Home prices on the high end go down. And state and local taxes go down. Right now we are subsidizing them. And that makes them go up in price.
It’s like they start with a big pile of excrement, and then over the following months sculpt it into something they think they can pass, not as a stool, but as law.
Well said. The swamp always wins,
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