#bipartisan tax bill

[intelligentchristianlady]

But according to JD, it's those Democrats, the childless cat ladies, who are anti-family?

[afloweroutofstone]

Someone should tell the Democratic Party to attack Trump more for the many bad things he did, rather than the few good ones. Personally I think it's great that Trump's maniacal authoritarian personality made him like Kim Jong Un enough to ignore the Korean Peninsula during his presidency, thereby allowing for the most productive diplomatic period of North-South Korea negotiations in a long time. I think it's cool that he was stupid enough to kill the "bipartisan immigration bill" that included more Republican policies than Democratic policies. Those are two of the only good things he ever did! Can we go back to the anti-corruption/unions/abortion/taxes/clean energy stuff please

[wilwheaton]

What the two different worldviews look like was on display earlier this month, when Republicans and a few Democrats in the Senate killed a bipartisan expansion of the child tax credit, a tax break for parents with dependent children. A hike in that credit during the pandemic cut child poverty dramatically, only for that rate to bounce back when the pandemic relief expired and dropped five million U.S. children back into poverty in 2022. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted that the change “underscores the fact that the number of children living in poverty is a policy choice.” On January 31, 2024, the House passed an expansion of the child tax credit that was smaller than the one in place during the pandemic, and Republican vice presidential hopeful Ohio senator J.D. Vance, who has been criticized for comments about “childless cat ladies,” seemed to support the measure when he said, “If you’re raising children in this country, we should make it easier, not harder. And unfortunately it’s way too expensive and way too difficult.” He then falsely accused Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris of calling for ending the child tax credit (she has actually called for expanding it).   But Vance missed the vote, and before it, Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) told colleagues that passing the bill would “give Harris a win before the election.” According to Chabeli Carranzana of The 19th, Tillis “printed out fake checks made out to ‘millions of American voters’ with the memo: ‘Don’t forget to vote for Kamala!’”  ”

August 14, 2024 - by Heather Cox Richardson

[saywhat-politics]

Louisiana voters reject constitutional amendments championed by Republican governor

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Louisiana voters soundly rejected four constitutional amendments championed by Republican Gov. Jeff Landry related to crime, courts and finances.

Voters said no to each amendment by margins exceeding 60%, according to preliminary results the secretary of state’s office released after voting concluded Saturday evening.

Landry and his allies had crisscrossed the state in support of an amendment that would have made sweeping changes to the revenue and finance section of the state’s constitution. The amendment received bipartisan support from lawmakers during a November special session on tax reform and was presented as a way to boost teacher salaries, curb excess spending and get rid of special tax breaks in the constitution.

Yet critics from across the political spectrum lambasted the proposed amendment as lacking transparency. The bill exceeded 100 pages but was condensed into a 91-word ballot question for voters.

[odinsblog]

Veterans’ health care


A 1996 law set eligibility requirements for military veterans to receive hospital, medical and nursing home care and authorized spending for those services and patient enrollment. That law has not been renewed, but Congress regularly allocates additional Department of Veterans Affairs funding and allows benefits to increase automatically based on inflation. VA provides medical care to more than 9.1 million enrolled veterans, according to the agency.
​

Drug development and opioid addiction treatment

Most of this spending relates to the bipartisan 21st Century Cures Act of 2016. That law provided money to the National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration to modernize pharmaceutical research and medical trials. It funded research for cancer cures and state-level grants for opioid addiction and other substance abuse treatment.


​State Department

In 2003, Congress passed the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, which set policy priorities and created spending authority for the State Department. That law has not been renewed, but Congress every year since has passed annual funding bills for the department, which Trump has announced he’ll nominate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) to run.


​Housing assistance

President Bill Clinton in 1998 signed the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act, which overhauled federal housing assistance policies, including voucher programs and other antipoverty assistance. The Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies continue using this law to implement federal housing programs.


​Justice Department

In 1994, Congress passed the landmark Violence Against Women Act and has renewed it multiple times since. In 2006, lawmakers packaged a VAWA renewal with authorizing legislation for the Justice Department. As with the State Department, Congress has not approved new authorizing legislation for the Justice Department since, but it has funded the agency — and even authorized hundreds of millions of dollars more for a new FBI headquarters — every year.


​Education spending

The 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act delegated power to state and local education officials to set primary and secondary education achievement standards. It gives billions of dollars in federal grant money to state and local education officials to fund schools and school districts. Those standards are still used by the Education Department, even though the legislation has not been reauthorized. Trump has suggested he’d like to eliminate the entire department.

NASA

Stripping funding for NASA, which was last reauthorized in 2017, could spell doom for Musk’s commercial spaceflight firm, SpaceX. The company has contracts worth more than $4 billion — including for return trips to the moon and retiring the International Space Station — linked to programs approved in the 2017 law.


​Health-care and student loan programs

What’s known as the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was actually passed in two separate bills in 2010. The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act represents the second bill, which included some tax revisions and technical changes to the ACA. The law has not been reauthorized since, but the Department of Health and Human Services reported in March that more than 45 million people have health insurance coverage backed by the Affordable Care Act.

The law that made those final tweaks to the ACA also overhauled the Education Department’s student loan program. Where some schools relied on private lenders to issue federally backed loans, with this law, the government itself became the lender. That change has since enabled President Joe Biden to offer student loan debt relief, though many of his most ambitious policies have been blocked by the courts. Student loans are generally funded through mandatory spending — similar to social safety net programs such as Medicare and Social Security — and not subject to annual spending laws.


​International security programs

The 1985 International Security and Development Cooperation Act bundled together authorizations for a number of international security programs, including funding and regulations for arms sales to allies, economic aid for developing countries, airport security, anti-narcotics-trafficking policies, the Peace Corps and more. This Reagan-era law continues to be foundational to congressional funding and federal policy.


​Head Start

Head Start provides preschool education for children from low-income families. In the 2023 fiscal year, more than 800,000 children enrolled in Head Start programs, according to the National Head Start Association. The program also helped place more than 530,000 parents in jobs, school or job-training programs. It was last authorized in 2007.

(continue reading)

[mariacallous]

WASHINGTON ― Congressional Republicans want to use a controversial budget gimmick to pass their $5 trillion tax cut package ― and they plan to steamroll the Senate rules to make it happen.

Their risky and never-before-used strategy hinges on how to account for the bill’s impact on the deficit. Republicans want to use a “current policy” baseline, which assumes the 2017 tax cuts will be extended permanently even though they are due to expire this year. Under this method, which has been roundly panned by bipartisan budget experts, Republicans could claim that a huge part of the tax cuts would be cost-free. In reality, however, they would blow a massive hole in the deficit.

Initially, Republicans were expected to seek a green light on using “current policy” from the Senate parliamentarian, who advises the chamber on its rules and parliamentary procedure. But a meeting between the parliamentarian and Democratic and Republican budget staffers was canceled on Tuesday, a sign that Senate Republicans are planning to go their own way.

Republican leaders argued in a closed-door lunch on Tuesday that Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has sufficient authority under the Congressional Budget Act to score their reconciliation bill using “current policy” himself, without needing a ruling from the parliamentarian.

“By law — it is the chairman’s call,” Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) told HuffPost.

But Democrats said that ignoring the Senate parliamentarian on the matter and pressing forward with a “current policy” baseline would be tantamount to going “nuclear” and breaking Senate rules, further weakening the institution.

“That would be going nuclear. It shows that Republicans are so hellbent on giving these tax breaks to the billionaires that they’re willing to break any rules, norms and things they promised they wouldn’t do,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters on Tuesday.

“Republicans are adding magic rules to their magic math,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) added. “At the end of the day, none of this will work. A $4.7 trillion tax giveaway to billionaires will cost $4.7 trillion, and cuts to Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid will be real and cost millions of people around this country.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Mira Lazine at LGBTQ Nation:

On Thursday, the United States House of Representatives passed a bill that would give authority to the Treasury Department to revoke a 501c non-profit’s tax-exempt status if they’re believed to support terrorism.

House Resolution 9495, also known as the “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act,” was sponsored by Rep. Tenney Claudia (R-NY) and passed through the house in a 219–184 vote. It has gone through multiple different forms since it was initially introduced in response to pro-Palestine organizers in the wake of the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. According to anthropologist and legal scholar Darryl Li, who spoke to Democracy Now, this bill exists exclusively as a means for the right-wing to crush their political opponents, especially those who advocate for the rights of Palestinians, who were recently found by the International Criminal Court to be victims of war crimes enacted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “This bill is essentially a civil rights disaster, that … would allow the government to shut down nonprofits on the smear of being terrorist-supporting organizations…. This law requires an accusation with no evidence, but a tie-in. It’s an accusation that nonprofits are supporting a group on one of the existing international terrorism lists… The bill is essentially discriminatory by design,” he said. “Initially, it did have significant bipartisan support, because, of course, anti-Palestinian racism is one of the great bipartisan unifiers in Congress.”

Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) justified the bill as a plain way to defund terrorism. “We, as members of Congress, have the duty to make sure that taxpayers are not subsidizing terrorism. It’s very, very simple,” he said on the House floor.  Smith didn’t provide evidence that any major U.S. non-profit group has ever supported terrorism. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the only Palestinian-American in Congress, said of the bill, “I don’t care who the president of the United States is. This is a dangerous and unconstitutional bill that would allow unchecked power to target nonprofit organizations as political enemies and shut them down without due process.” The bill doesn’t just pose a danger to advocates for war refugees trapped in Gaza, but also possibly to LGBTQ+ nonprofits as well. As the Trump-Vance campaign spent record numbers on anti-trans ad spending, it is increasingly likely that they could use this bill as a pretense to attack the many nonprofits that advocate for LGBTQ+ individuals. Li details that this could be the case for just about anyone who is a political opponent of the ruling administration.

[...] “Right-wingers and white supremacists in Congress can support this bill, with the assurance that their allies, right-wing extremist groups, are highly, highly unlikely to ever be targeted by this bill, because there isn’t going to — it’s much less likely that they will be smeared with an accusation of being tied to an international terrorist organization that’s already on one of the government lists,” Li said. Groups that could be on the chopping block with this bill include the American Civil Liberties Union, Planned Parenthood, the Human Rights Campaign, as well as nonprofit news outlets like Mother Jones or ProPublica.

HR9495 is an attack on nonprofit organizations, and Donald Trump and his allies can twist the definition of “supporting terrorism” to not only include pro-Palestinian groups, but also pro-abortion access and pro-LGBTQ+ groups (or any group that opposes the MAGA movement).

It’s time to kill this immoral bill in the Senate.

[truth-has-a-liberal-bias]

The House voted Wednesday night to pass a $78 billion tax package that includes an expansion of the child tax credit, sending it to the Senate, where its path is uncertain. The Republican-led House passed the bipartisan measure 357-70...

...

It now heads to the Senate, where it will need at least 60 votes to advance.

Given the margin in the House, and the scope of the bipartisan support, that might not seem like much of a challenge, but one GOP senator summarized a core problem. NBC News also reported:

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, cast doubt Wednesday on passing a bipartisan tax bill, saying it could make President Joe Biden “look good” and improve Democrats’ chances of holding the White House in the 2024 election. Grassley said re-electing Biden could hurt Republican hopes of extending Trump-era tax cuts.

...

The problem is not that the Iowa Republican opposes the underlying legislation; the problem is that his principal concern is avoiding governing successes that might make President Joe Biden “look good” in an election year.

The longtime GOP senator could put country over party, but by his own admission, he’s reluctant to do so. To hear Grassley tell it, reducing child poverty is fine, but helping the Republican Party’s electoral strategies is better. [...]

[notwiselybuttoowell]

Over the last decade, states and municipalities have brought more than 30 lawsuits accusing big oil of intentionally covering up the climate risks of their products, and seeking potentially billions in damages. The defendants have worked to kill the cases, with limited success.

Now, with Republicans in control of the White House and both congressional chambers, advocates fear the industry will go further, pursuing total immunity from all existing and future climate lawsuits. To do so, they could lobby for a liability waiver like the one granted to the firearms industry in 2005, which has successfully blocked most attempts to hold them accountable for violence.

“Lawmakers must decisively reject any attempt by the fossil fuel industry to evade accountability and ensure both justice today and the right of future generations to hold polluters responsible for decades of deception,” said the missive, which is addressed to the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, and Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer.

Fossil fuel companies have vied for such a get-out-of-jail-free card for years. In 2017, a coalition of Republican officials, economists and oil companies proposed legal liability as a condition of a carbon tax, arguing the industry could not weather both. When the council abandoned the waiver proposal two years later, Exxon threatened to leave the group, documents subpoenaed by the Senate show.

Then, in 2020, a waiver was quietly included in a draft of a Covid-19 spending package but was later removed, the investigative climate outlet Drilled found.

Such a waiver could only pass through the Senate with supermajority support, requiring backing from some Democrats. In a January interview, Michael Gerrard, a climate law expert at Columbia University, said it is “hard to imagine” it winning bipartisan backing. But the advocates fear oil companies could lobby officials to once again quietly tuck the proposal into a larger, must-pass piece of legislation.

“Democrats need to be on guard,” said Aaron Regunberg, the climate accountability project director at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, which signed the letter.

On the campaign trail, Trump pledged to “stop the wave of frivolous litigation from environmental extremists”. And this month, a rightwing thinktank launched a campaign attempting to shoot down litigation from “radical climate groups”, which it called the “biggest risk” to Donald Trump’s energy agenda, E&E News reported. The thinktank has ties to Leonard Leo, who is widely known as a force behind the Federalist Society, which orchestrated the ultraconservative takeover of the American judiciary.

Another development sparking worry at oil companies: “climate superfund” bills, meant to make big polluters help pay for climate action.

Last year, Vermont and New York passed such measures, which are loosely modeled on the US superfund program. Ten other states are considering similar proposals, which could each cost the industry billions or trillions.

Red states and oil lobby groups are legally challenging the laws. This week, the Federalist Society – which Leo co-chairs – hosted a panel criticizing the measures.

It is a major fear for Cassidy DiPaola of the pro-climate superfund group Make Polluters Pay, which signed the letter.

“What’s at stake here isn’t just who pays for climate disasters,” she said. “It’s whether our democracy allows powerful industries to simply rewrite the rules when justice catches up to them.”

[anexperimentallife]

My cardiologist told me to avoid the news if possible, but I'm like, "No, I have to pay attention because--among MANY other reasons--King Musk and the Orange Shitgibbon don't want me to get my January disability check, and I won't find out until Saturday at the earliest whether their congressional pawns are going to let them have their way."

No, really. They absolutely refuse to return taxes on the ultra-wealthy to pre-Reagan levels OR to cut military spending, so things like cancer research for kids and social security are on the table to be cut, and the Muskrat wants NO new spending bill passed until after Jan 20th so his orange pet can take credit; I can't just NOT pay attention.

And oh yeah--even though the Orange Shitgibbon hasn't taken office yet, he told the GOP to tank the bipartisan spending bill they'd developed with Dems, SO THEY DID. And now Musk and Trump have directed congressional Republicans VIA TWEET to tank their OWN bill--the one they developed ENTIRELY ON THEIR OWN.

[thebiscuiteternal]

Less than 48 hours before defaulting and triggering a shutdown, Congress is still scrambling to pass a stopgap funding resolution that will keep the U.S. government funded and functional through the next few months. After several starts and stops, Republicans were reduced to infighting on Wednesday after Elon Musk — Trump’s “first buddy” and government “efficiency” adviser — rejected a proposed funding deal and called for a legislative freeze and government shutdown until Trump’s inauguration in late January.  As a result, the new stripped-down funding bill proposed on Thursday is literally throwing out the baby with the bathwater: It will exclude $190 million for the bipartisan “Give Kids a Chance” program for child cancer research. Sam Stein of The Bulwark points out that the new bill also excludes funding for research on premature labor, sickle cell disease treatment, early detection of breast and cervical cancer, the Rural Broadband Protection Act, an anti-deepfake porn bill, and more. “Fuck cancer. Especially pediatric cancer,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) wrote on X. “These people want to punish these previous little kids to pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest corporations in human history.” President-elect Donald Trump endorsed the new funding bill on Thursday afternoon, writing on Truth Social: “Speaker Mike Johnson and the House have come to a very good Deal for the American People. The newly agreed to American Relief Act of 2024 will keep the Government open, fund our Great Farmers and others, and provide relief for those severely impacted by the devastating hurricanes.”  “A VERY important piece, VITAL to the America First Agenda, was added as well — The date of the very unnecessary Debt Ceiling will be pushed out two years, to January 30, 2027,” Trump added. “All Republicans, and even the Democrats, should do what is best for our Country, and vote ‘YES for this bill.”  Democrats have been trolling Trump since Musk sank the original funding deal on Wednesday, referring to the billionaire as “President Musk” after he bent congressional Republicans to his will. Musk, like Trump, seems pleased with the new version of the legislation. He posted an image of the amount of pages of the now-dead deal compared to the substantially smaller number of pages of the new bill, adding a laughing emoji.

I'm gonna throw up.

[misfitwashere]

September 9, 2024 

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

SEP 10

Last night, Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign launched a new section of its website detailing her policy positions. Titling her plans “A New Way Forward,” Harris vows to build the American middle class through an “opportunity economy.” Her vision for the future, she says, “protects our fundamental freedoms, strengthens our democracy, and ensures every person has the opportunity to not just get by, but to get ahead.” 

Harris’s economic plan builds on that of the Biden-Harris administration. This makes sense, since their focus on investing in the middle class has created the strongest economy in the world. Harris is emphasizing the need to bring down household costs of food, medicine, housing, healthcare, and childcare, all issues important to Americans.  

The website provides concrete economic actions she plans to take with a willing Congress. They include expanding the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, investing in more housing, and supporting the PRO Act, which protects the rights of workers to unionize, while continuing the crackdown on business consolidation that kills competition and rolling back the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

The biggest economic shift from the current administration is pegging a new capital gains tax for those earning more than a million dollars a year at 28%, significantly lower than the 39.6% President Joe Biden proposed in his 2025 budget. The plans also call for the first-ever national ban on corporate price gouging on food and groceries (37 states already have such laws). 

Aside from strictly economic plans, the policy pages say Harris backs passing the bipartisan immigration bill that Republicans killed on Trump’s orders, protecting reproductive healthcare and restoring Roe v. Wade, and protecting the right to vote and ending partisan gerrymandering through the John Lewis Voting Rights and the Freedom to Vote Acts.

Republicans have charged that Harris has not offered specifics for her policies, but much of what is now clearly laid out is already in the public record. By the standards of American history, it is a strikingly moderate agenda that reflects the belief that the best way for the government to protect opportunity and nurture the economy is to make sure that the system is fair and that ordinary people have access to opportunity.

The “New Way Forward” in Harris’s plan seems to be less a new set of policies than a rejection of the politics of the past several decades. She and her running mate Minnesota governor Tim Walz appear to be attempting to reshape the political landscape to bring Americans of all parties together to stand against Trump’s MAGA Republicans. The campaign has actively reached out to Republicans, several of whom spoke at the Democratic National Convention. On Saturday, Harris said she was “honored” to have the endorsement of former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) and former vice president Dick Cheney, both staunch Republicans. “People are exhausted about the division and the attempt to divide us as Americans,” she said. “We love our country and we have more in common than what separates us.” 

Trump’s website offers slogans rather than policies, so Harris’s website compares her policies to the comparable sections of Project 2025, the playbook for a second Trump term laid out by a number of right-wing institutions led by the Heritage Foundation. Trump and his campaign have tried to distance themselves from Project 2025, but at his rallies, he has offered the policies in it—like firing nonpartisan civil servants and replacing them with loyalists, and abolishing the Department of Education—as his top priorities. 

While Harris focused on policy, as critics have demanded, MAGA Republicans today spread slurs about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, claiming they are eating other people’s pets and local wildlife. Right-wing media figure Benny Johnson, who was one of the six commenters whose paychecks at now-disbanded Tenet Media were paid by Russia, was one of those pushing the false stories. So was X owner Elon Musk. 

The story was debunked almost immediately by the Springfield police, but Republican politicians ran with it. The X account for Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee ran it; so did Texas senator Ted Cruz, who shared an image with two kittens saying: “PLEASE VOTE FOR TRUMP SO IMMIGRANTS DON’T EAT US.” And the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio senator J.D. Vance, posted: “Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country.” (The Haitians in Springfield are in the U.S. legally.)

Perhaps most significantly, Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno, who is challenging Democratic Ohio senator Sherrod Brown, pushed the story. That Senate seat is crucial to the Republican attempt to take control of the Senate, and Moreno has just launched a $25 million ad campaign against Brown, accusing him of giving undocumented immigrants taxpayer-funded benefits. Today’s disinformation was well timed for that ad campaign. 

The Justice Department today announced  charges against two leaders of the white supremacist Terrorgram Collective, an international terrorist group that operates on the platform Telegram. Dallas Humber of California and Matthew Allison of Idaho have been charged with “soliciting hate crimes, soliciting the murder of federal officials, and conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.” They “solicited murders and hate crimes based on the race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, and gender identity of others,” U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert said. They had a hit list of federal, state, and local officials, as well as corporate leaders, and they encouraged attacks on government infrastructure, including energy facilities. Their plan was to create a race war. 

“Hate crimes fueled by bigotry and white supremacy, and amplified by the weaponization of digital messaging platforms, are on the rise and have no place in our society,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said.

Congress is back in session today and must fund the government before October 1 or face a government shutdown. Although Congress negotiated spending levels for 2024 and 2025 back in June 2023, the House has been unable to pass appropriations bills because MAGA extremists either refuse to accept those levels or insist on inserting culture war poison pills into the bills. 

Now, Trump has demanded that a continuing resolution to fund the government must include a measure requiring proof of citizenship to vote. Since it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote in elections for president or members of Congress and there is no evidence it is anything but vanishingly rare, the measure actually seems designed to suppress voting. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) went along and put the measure in the bill. He also designed for the measure to last until next March, making the budget so late a new president could write it, but also blowing through a January 1 deadline set in the June 2023 bill to require automatic cuts to spending.

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) wrote to his colleagues: “House Democrats have made it clear that we will find bipartisan common ground on any issue with our Republican colleagues wherever possible, while pushing back against MAGA extremism.” Jeffries called the Republican bill “unserious and unacceptable.”

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told House and Senate leaders that the cuts required by law if Congress pushes the budget into March would drastically affect the military. “The repercussions of Congress failing to pass regular appropriations legislation for the first half of [fiscal] 2025 would be devastating to our readiness and ability to execute the National Defense Strategy,” Austin wrote.

Meanwhile, Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is back to his old trick of blocking a military promotion, this time of Lieutenant General Ronald Clark, one of Austin’s top aides. Tuberville says he placed the hold because he has concerns that Clark did not alert Biden when Austin had surgery. Biden has nominated Clark to become the Commanding General of the U.S. Army Pacific, a position currently held by General Charles A. Flynn, younger brother of Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, Trump’s first National Security Advisor who resigned after news broke that he had hidden conversations with Russian operatives. 

Today, ten retired senior military officials endorsed Harris, saying she “is the best—and only��presidential candidate in this race who is fit to serve as our commander-in-chief…. Frankly stated, Donald Trump is a danger to our national security and our democracy. His own former National Security Advisors, Defense Secretaries, and Chiefs of Staff have said so.”

—

[beardedmrbean]

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a bill, which received bipartisan support, that seeks to make the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) handling of tax return errors more transparent.

Newsweek has contacted Iowa Republican Representative Randy Feenstra, who introduced the bill, out of normal working hours via email for comment.

Why It Matters

Taxpayers who receive an IRS notice of a math or clerical error face a process that critics describe as opaque and difficult to navigate. The IRS is allowed to adjust tax liabilities without initiating an audit, and can send automated letters that often lack detail and can result in unexpected bills or reductions in refunds.

Supporters of the proposed legislation say it addresses a long-standing gap in taxpayer communication, as the bill seeks to reduce confusion, prevent unnecessary financial strain, and give taxpayers the tools to understand and challenge changes made to their filings.

What To Know

In February, Feenstra introduced H.R. 998, the Internal Revenue Service Math and Taxpayer Help Act, which has cleared the lower chamber unanimously and awaits Senate consideration.

The legislation is designed to ensure that the IRS provides clearer explanations when it identifies math or clerical errors in tax filings.

The bill requires that each IRS notice include specific information about the error and what steps the taxpayer can take in response.

The notices must describe the type of error in "plain language" and identify the specific line on the tax return that was affected.

They must also include an itemized breakdown of how the IRS recalculated the return, giving taxpayers a transparent view of how any adjustments were made.

Notices will now feature a dedicated phone number for the IRS' automated transcript service and must state the deadline by which a taxpayer can request an abatement, essentially a reversal, of the tax changes.

The bill outlines that such abatement requests can be submitted by mail, electronically, over the phone or in person.

Additionally, if the IRS later makes changes that reduce the assessment tied to a previous error, it must send a follow-up notice that explains the abatement with the same level of detail as the original notice.

The bill received support from both parties in the House, with no recorded opposition in the floor vote or committee hearings.

What People Are Saying

Iowa Republican Representative Randy Feenstra said: "If the IRS finds a mistake on a tax return—for example, when a taxpayer accidentally adds a zero to their reported income—the agency should clearly communicate that error to the taxpayer and explain why a tax refund is different than expected(...)

"With this legislative fix, we can improve customer service by promoting open and transparent communication between the IRS and the taxpayer when a tax error is identified."

Missouri Republican Representative Jason Smith, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said: "This bill is a win for taxpayers that will deliver better protection for Americans and greater accountability to the IRS."

Ryan J. Wilson, professor of accounting at the Tippie College of Business in Iowa, told Newsweek: "This seems like a positive for taxpayers. Certainly, IRS communication can be vague and confusing. Taking steps to enhance clarity around clerical errors and recalculated returns is helpful. I also like the idea of providing a number for taxpayers to call."

What Happens Next

Having cleared the House, H.R. 998 now moves to the Senate. If passed, the bill would proceed to the president for his signature.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Matt Wuerker, Politico

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 20, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Dec 21, 2024

This evening the House of Representatives passed a measure to fund the government for three months. The measure will fund the government at current levels halfway through March. It also appropriates $100 billion in disaster aid for regions hit by the storms and fires of the summer and fall, as well as $10 billion for farmers.

Getting to this agreement has exposed the power vacuum in the Republican Party and thus a crisis in the government of the United States.

This fight over funding has been brewing since Republicans took over the House of Representatives in January 2023. From their first weeks in office, when they launched the longest fight over a House speaker since 1860, the Republicans were bitterly divided. MAGA Republicans want to slash government so deeply that it will no longer be able to regulate business, provide a basic safety net, promote infrastructure, or protect civil rights. Establishment Republicans also want to cut the government, but they recognize that with Democrats in charge of the Senate and a Democratic president, they cannot get everything they want.

As Jacob Bogage of the Washington Post recounted, when the nation hit the debt ceiling in spring 2023, Republicans used it to demand that the Democrats cut the budget back to 2022 levels. Democrats objected that they had raised the debt ceiling without conditions three times under Trump and that Republicans had agreed to the budget to which the new Republicans were demanding cuts.

The debt ceiling is a holdover from World War I, when Congress stopped micromanaging the instruments the Treasury used to borrow money and instead simply set a debt limit. That procedure began to be a political weapon after the tax cuts first during President George W. Bush’s term and then under President Donald Trump reduced government revenues to 16.5% of the nation’s gross domestic product while spending has risen to nearly 23%. This gap means the country must borrow money to meet its budget appropriations, eventually hitting the ceiling.

The Treasury has never defaulted on the U.S. debt. A default would mean the government could not meet its obligations, and would, as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned in 2023, “cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and global financial stability.”

As journalist Borage recalled, when then–House speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to raise the debt ceiling in June 2023 in exchange for the Fiscal Responsibility Act that kept the 2024 and 2025 budgets at 2022 levels, House extremists turned on him. In September those extremists, led by then-representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) threw McCarthy out of the speaker’s chair—the only time in American history that a party has thrown out its own speaker. Weeks later, the Republicans finally voted to make Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaker, but Johnson had to rely on Democratic votes to fund the government for fiscal year 2024.

For 2025, Johnson and the Republicans said they wanted more cuts than the Fiscal Responsibility Act set out, and even still, the extremists filled the appropriations bills with culture-wars poison pills. Johnson couldn’t get any measures through the House, and instead kept the government operating with Democratic votes for continuing resolutions that funded the government first through September 30, and then through today, December 20.

At the same time, a farm bill, which Congress usually passes every five years and which outlines the country’s agriculture and food policies including supplemental nutrition (formerly known as food stamps), expired in 2023 and has also been continued through temporary extensions.

On Tuesday, December 17, Johnson announced that Republican and Democratic congressional leaders had hashed out another bipartisan continuing resolution that kept spending at current levels through March 14 while also providing about $100 billion in disaster relief and about $10 billion in assistance for farmers. It also raised congressional salaries and kicked the government funding deadline through March 14. With bipartisan backing, it seemed like a last-minute reprieve from a holiday government shutdown.

Extremist Republicans immediately opposed the measure, but this was not a surprise. There were likely enough Democratic votes to pass it without them.

What WAS a surprise was that on Wednesday, billionaire Elon Musk, who holds billions in federal contracts, frightened Republican lawmakers into killing the continuing resolution by appearing to threaten to fund primary challengers against those who voted for the resolution. “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” he tweeted. Later, he added: “No bills should be passed Congress [sic] until Jan 20, when [Trump] takes office.”

Musk’s opposition appeared to shock President-elect Donald Trump into speaking up against the bill about thirteen hours after Musk’s first stand, when he and Vice President–elect J.D. Vance also came out against the measure. But, perhaps not wanting to seem to be following in Musk’s wake, Trump then added a new and unexpected demand. He insisted that any continuing resolution raise or get rid of the debt ceiling throughout his term, although the debt ceiling isn’t currently an issue. Trump threatened to primary any Republican who voted for a measure that did not suspend the debt ceiling.

Trump’s demand highlighted that his top priority is not the budget deficit he promised during the campaign to cut by 33%, but rather freeing himself up to spend whatever he wishes: after all, he added about a quarter of the current national debt during his first term. He intends to extend his 2017 tax cuts after they expire in 2025, although the Congressional Budget Office estimates that those cuts will add $4.6 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years. He has also called for the deportation of 11 million to 20 million undocumented immigrants and possibly others, at a cost estimate of $88 billion to $315 billion a year.

House Republicans killed the bipartisan bill and, yesterday afternoon, introduced a new bill, rewritten along the lines Musk and Trump had demanded. They had not shown it to Democrats. It cut out a number of programs, including $190 million designated for pediatric cancer research, but it included the $110 billion in disaster aid and aid to farmers. It also raised the debt ceiling for the next two years, during which Republicans will control Congress.

"All Republicans, and even the Democrats, should do what is best for our Country and vote 'YES' for this Bill, TONIGHT!" Trump wrote.

But extremist Republicans said no straight out of the box, and Democrats, who had not been consulted on the bill, wanted no part of it. Republicans immediately tried to blame the Democrats for the looming government shutdown. Ignoring that Musk had manufactured the entire crisis and that members of his own party refused to support the measure, Trump posted, “This is a Biden problem to solve, but if Republicans can help solve it, they will.”

Then, as Johnson went back to the drawing board, Musk posted on X his support for Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) neo-Nazi party. This raised back to prominence Trump’s having spent November 5, Election Day, at Mar-a-Lago with members of AfD, who said they are hoping to be close with the incoming Trump administration.

Today, social media exploded with the realization that an unelected billionaire from South Africa who apparently supports fascism was able to intimidate Republican legislators into doing his bidding. In this last week, Trump has threatened former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) with prosecution for her work as a member of Congress and has sued the Des Moines Register for publishing a poll that was unfavorable to him before the November election. Those actions are classic authoritarian moves to consolidate power, but to those not paying close attention they were perhaps less striking than the reality that Musk appears to have taken over for Trump as the incoming president.

As CNN’s Erin Burnett pointed out “the world’s richest man, right now, holding the country hostage,” Democrats worked to call attention to this crisis. Representative Richard Neal (D-MA) said: “We reached an agreement…and a tweet changed all of it? Can you imagine what the next two years are going to be like if every time the Congress works its will and then there's a tweet…from an individual who has no official portfolio who threatens members on the Republican side with a primary, and they succumb?”

The chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Patty Murray (D-WA), said she would stay in Washington, D.C., through Christmas “because we’re not going to let Elon Musk run the government. Put simply, we should not let an unelected billionaire rip away research for pediatric cancer so he can get a tax cut or tear down policies that help America outcompete China because it could hurt his bottom line. We had a bipartisan deal—we should stick to it…. The American people do not want chaos or a costly government shutdown all because an unelected billionaire wants to call the shots.”

Republicans, too, seemed dismayed at Musk’s power. Representative Rich McCormick (R-GA) told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: “Last time I checked, Elon Musk doesn’t have a vote in Congress. Now, he has influence and he’ll put pressure on us to do whatever he thinks the right thing is for him, but I have 760,000 people that voted for me to do the right thing for them. And that’s what matters to me.”

Tonight the House passed a measure much like the one Musk and Trump had undermined, funding the government and providing the big-ticket disaster and farm relief but not raising or getting rid of the debt ceiling. According to Jennifer Scholtes of Politico, Republican leadership tried to get party members on board by promising to raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion early in 2025 while also cutting $2.5 trillion in “mandatory” spending, which covers Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP nutrition assistance.

The vote in the House was 366 to 34, with one abstention. The measure passed thanks to Democratic votes, with 196 Democrats voting yes in addition to the 170 Republicans who voted yes (because of the circumstances of its passage, the measure needed two thirds of the House to vote yes). No Democrats voted against the measure, while 34 Republicans abandoned their speaker to vote no. As Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News wrote: “Dem[ocrat]s saved Republicans here.” Democrats also kept the government functioning to help ordinary Americans.

The fiasco of the past few days is a political blow to Trump. Musk overshadowed him, and when Trump demanded that Republicans free him from the debt ceiling, they ignored him. Meanwhile, extremist Republicans are calling for Johnson’s removal, but it is unclear who could earn the votes to take his place. And, since the continuing resolution extends only until mid-March, and the first two months of Trump’s term will undoubtedly be consumed with the Senate confirmation hearings for his appointees—some of whom are highly questionable—it looks like this chaos will continue into 2025.

The Senate passed the measure as expected just after midnight. Nonetheless, it appears that that chaos, and the extraordinary problem of an unelected billionaire who hails from South Africa calling the shots in the Republican Congress, will loom over the new year.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[boricuacherry-blog]

First-term Michigan senator Elissa Slotkin entered the national spotlight last week when she delivered the Democratic Party's rebuttal to Trump's address to Congress.

"Americans have made it clear that prices are too high. America wants change. This country is only 250 years old. That is young for a country. But there's a responsible way to make change and a reckless way," she said. She didn't mince words when she explained:

"We need to understand what's happening. Trump is looking in all the couch cushions for about 6 trillion dollars so that he can rewrite the tax code and give a real big benefit to some of the wealthiest in our country. And he's gonna make you pay for it in every part of your life - groceries, homes, etc. They call your Medicare and social security entitlements - things you have worked for your entire life - and while digging through those couch cushions, that social security equal some big bills. They'll make you pay, and then tell you it's gonna be alright, just let us get through that 'hump.'"

She identified with Al Green, who defied Trump and stood up for his constituents in the recent congress meeting. "I identify with that passion and frustration. That comes from a real place. I identify with that need to try and do something."

Dubbed a 'rising star' within the Democratic Party, Slotkin is among the most bipartisan members of Congress. Her dad was a lifelong Republican and her mom a lifelong Democrat. "For me, it's about trying to find those places where we can still work together," Slotkin says. She proposes that Democrats be more ruthless in what they prioritize.

Her advice to Americans:

"Don't tune out. America needs you now more than ever. Hold your elected officials, including me, accountable. Organize. Pick just one issue you're passionate about and engage."

Slotkin became the youngest Democratic woman elected to the Senate after winning a competitive seat in Michigan, a state that Trump won in the 2024 presidential election.

[mariacallous]

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is crashing the global economy with arbitrary tariffs against countries around the world, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

Congress could stop the tariffs at any time.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to control tariffs, but lawmakers have over the decades ceded their power to the White House with laws expanding the president’s trade powers, including authorities to impose duties in cases of emergency.

Trump has claimed fentanyl and international trade itself are emergencies to justify taxes of 10% or higher not just on every U.S. trading partner but on friendly neighbors like Canada and even on uninhabited islands home to only seals or penguins.

Already, members of Congress have introduced legislation to roll back the president’s tariff power. But Republican leaders have given no indication they will allow the bills to become law, as they work instead on passing trillions of dollars in tax cuts.

Still, several rank-and-file Republicans have refused to go along with Trump’s crazed napkin-math trade agenda that assumes the U.S. has been “looted, pillaged, raped and plundered” by any country where the value of its exports exceeds its imports from the U.S.

In the Senate, a bipartisan group of lawmakers led by Chuck Grassley of Iowa last week introduced legislation to reassert Congress’ role over trade policy. That bill has the support of seven GOP co-sponsors, enough to overcome a filibuster. It’s unclear whether Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) will ever bring it up for a vote since that would almost certainly anger Trump.