#susan taxpayer cut content

[yakkyrwhackr]

I JUST FOUND MULTIPLE TEST LEVELS IN THE FILES FOR SUSAN TAXPAYER

[sallie-may-gaming]

Some thoughts on the burnout from big studio made movies and games

Basically they've brought it on themselves. Audiences are starved for new things, and studios are in a better position than ever to put them in the audience's hands, they've got prospective artists banging down their door for jobs, and they've got boatloads of money now. The problem is they don't want to. They want to sit on their asses and be greedy. They want to keep grinding out reboots and remakes and whatnot. Now don't get me wrong, these can be great -I myself am a huge fan of the Carmen Sandiego and She-Ra reboots- but then you have stuff like voltron that shows how badly that can go. But that's all anyone wants to do, is make the next Sherlock of Voltron that will get people to watch it based off of nostalgia and then move on to the next. They're cutting old original content too, so all you can watch now is that paste. You're seeing it in video games now too, with your hogwarts legacy and your Mario. Once in a while they'll make something new and bold that people really want and go crazy for like Mario Odyssey, or will update their old fan classics like metroid prime and metroid dread, but why bother when they can just churn out a half-finished Pokémon or another 2D Mario and people will eat it up and slap dozens of games of the year and 10/10 scores for just being repetitive sanded down drivel, while you have your star fox, your captain falcon, your wario fans left starving because they don't want to make new original ideas anymore when realistically they're in a better place to do so than ever. They have so much money, why not throw it at something new? And it's showing. People are getting tired of it and going to the indie scene, to the people who HAVE to be original, otherwise they might get buried in court. The studios have gotten too comfortable in their wealth and only see churning out more of the same as free dollars signs and originality as an uncomfortable -an often unnecessary- risk. And I think we're approaching a singularity. The studios are gonna keep making the next marvel movie, the next soulless 2D Mario, and people will be like, "yeah, that's nice, more of the same, I'll watch or play it later I guess." Because they've become oversaturated, and they only have so long before they run out of stuff to reboot, and the content runs dry. Nostalgia can only carry them so far and people now either have a very clear idea of what they want, or they're bored and want something new and exciting. Either way, the steams, the A24s, have them covered. The studios want to bank off how big their IPs are without putting in any of the innovation that made them so big in the first place. The Mario IP is so good and has so many fans because of the 3D Mario games, the series about the side characters like yoshi luigi peach wario, the series that Nintendo is now sleeping on. And the fans, they're moving on to greener pastures. They're finding their new warios in the Peppino Spaghettis, the Dynamite Antons and Susan Taxpayers, they're finding their new Samuses in the Hollow Knights, the Dead Cells, and they're enjoying it and it's raising their standards. The corporate needs to step up their game, or the gamers, the show bingers, are going to be moving on and not looking back.

But yeah. Mark my words, backwards compatibility is going to make or break consoles soon people are gonna get fed up with the artificial nostalgia of having the same thing over and over fed to them while the companies lock away access to the actual older games behind lack of backwards compatibility and refusal to remaster or make new entries. And perhaps one of the biggest sins is that the corporations are raising the prices. They're trying to raise the price to $70 and saying that video games are more expensive than ever to make and that's not necessarily the case, and indie devs prove it with their premium experiences at 5, 15, maybe 40 dollars. Some of them hit the $60 mark but I'd rather spend 60 or 70 dollars knowing it'll go right to someone who actually cares about queer people and has worked hard to bring that experience to us.

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

What proportion of U.S. fossil fuel consumption is attributable to our food system? How much are farmers earning from their crops? What percentage of American households have enough food to healthfully feed their members? How would various trade policies affect U.S. agriculture?

When policymakers and other interested parties need answers to these questions, they turn to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. However, ERS is at the center of a heated debate as the USDA moves to reorganize the agency and relocate it outside of Washington, D.C. The USDA says the plan will save money and improve the agency’s ability to serve its stakeholders. Critics, including at least 56 former USDA and federal statistical agency officials, say the plan undermines the agency’s ability to carry out its mission and threatens its independent status.

The new plan would move ERS from the research arm of the USDA to one that supports the administration’s policies from within the agriculture secretary’s office. That’s worrisome, said John E. Lee, the administrator of ERS from 1981 to 1993, because the agency’s position under the undersecretary for science and education has helped to protect it as a place for objective science. Moving it to the offices of the chief economist places it in a branch centered on policy, which could threaten its ability to remain policy-neutral. (Lee recently wrote an op-ed in The Hill voicing his opposition to the plan.)

“Every administration I’ve worked for — both Democrat and Republican — at some point gets uncomfortable with one piece or another of ERS analysis,” said Susan Offutt, the ERS administrator under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. As an example, she pointed to research showing that most farmers are fairly well off. “It’s not a politically popular finding,” she said, adding such finding are why it’s essential to keep the agency in a neutral role, lest inconvenient statistics like those disappear.

The current mission of the ERS is to provide evidence to inform policy, not to support any policy over another. ERS evaluates USDA programs but not in a prescriptive manner, said Kitty Smith Evans, who served as the ERS administrator from 2006 to 2011. “We had a saying: Never say ‘should.’” Instead, the agency’s role is to determine the economic consequences of policies and then allow policymakers to use that information to make their own decisions, she said.

The new changes were put into motion by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and announced out of the blue, according to multiple sources interviewed for this story. (The USDA press office and ERS are closed during the government shutdown, so they were unavailable to respond to FiveThirtyEight’s request for comment.) “The current administrator is a friend of mine,” said Smith Evans. “The stakeholders were not consulted before or since.”

Many former officials are shaking their heads. “I personally know the secretary [Perdue] and have an extremely high regard for him,” said Gale Buchanan, a former USDA chief scientist and undersecretary of agriculture for research, education and economics. “But I’m just kind of at a loss to really understand the rationale here.”

The USDA has stated three reasons for relocating ERS: to move “important USDA resources closer to many stakeholders,” to “improve USDA’s ability to attract and retain highly qualified staff,” and to save taxpayers money. Realigning the agency with the Office of the Chief Economist, meanwhile, “will enhance the effectiveness of economic analysis at USDA,” according to a USDA press release.

Former ERS administer Lee said the USDA’s contention that most of ERS’ stakeholders are far from the D.C. area suggests “a lack of knowledge about what the agency really does and who the stakeholders are.” ERS doesn’t work with individual farmers; instead, the agency’s focus is on answering questions about the national impact of policies and legislation.

The American Statistical Association has written a point-by-point rebuttal of USDA’s stated rationale. It notes that moving ERS out of the capital region, which is a hub for statistical researchers, agricultural policy groups and federal agencies, will actually make the agency less connected to its stakeholders and national discussions of agriculture. The relocation would also remove ERS from the broader scientific funding research community, said Steve Pierson, director of science policy at the ASA.

The Trump administration’s 2019 budget proposal, released last February, called for slashing the ERS workforce by more than 40 percent and cutting the budget nearly in half, to $45 million. Congress balked and restored funding in their spending bill1 in May, but the administration’s proposal says a lot about their objectives, Offutt said. Some former ERS officials I spoke with suspected the proposed changes to the agency could be an alternative way to shrink the agency. While the USDA says “no employees will be involuntarily separated,” multiple sources told FiveThirtyEight that since the proposal was announced, the agency has experienced a “brain drain” as workers seek other positions in Washington in anticipation of their jobs being moved to another part of the country. USDA solicited “expressions of interest” for hosting ERS as well as the USDA’s research funding arm, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and says it has received 136 of them.

Meanwhile, a blue ribbon panel of 37 current and former university agricultural administration leaders and former USDA chief scientists wrote to members of Congress saying that relocating the ERS “will set back the agency for 5-10 years and undermine its independence as a federal statistical agency” and urged Congress to intervene to halt the restructuring and relocation plans “at least until there has been a comprehensive independent study and full consultation with the stakeholder community.” The American Statistical Association and the Agriculture and Applied Economics Association also wrote letters opposing the plan.

With Democrats now in control of the House, these groups may yet get their wish. Last month, Reps. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and Chellie Pingree, D-Maine, introduced the “Agriculture Research Integrity Act,” which would block the proposed changes. Meanwhile, the USDA Office of Inspector General is reviewing the USDA plan at the request of Hoyer and other Democrats.

[talltalestogo]

The Trump White House holds many horrors. Some have become well-known. There’s Jared Kushner, the son-in-law, and his dreadful wife Ivanka; white nationalists Stephen and Katie Miller; the unbelievably named Chad Wolf at the Department of Homeland Security; and Betsy DeVos, who appears to be on a personal mission to privatize the public education system. But presidential administrations are powered by thousands of staff and propped up by various appointees who often don’t receive much public attention. But Trump’s noncelebrity ghouls deserve the same opprobrium liberals have dished out to Kushner et al. Below, an incomprehensive list of the worst Trump officials you’ve probably forgotten about. Better memorize their names now, before they all disappear into lucrative consultancies.

Seema Verma

The crown for Worst Little-Known Trump Ghoul goes to Verma. In her role as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Verma approved drastic cuts to Medicaid that left thousands of needy Americans without health care. She did so with enthusiasm, too.

This alone makes Verma a monstrous human being. But it’s her commitment to craft that really sets her apart from the other names on this list. Verma did not content herself with the knowledge that she’d deprived poor Americans of the care they need to stay alive. She also treated the very same taxpayers as though they were a resource to exploit. Last year, she filed a bizarre $47,000 claim for lost property with the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees CMS. That figure included “an Ivanka Trump–brand pendant, made of gold, prasiolite and diamonds, that Verma’s jeweler valued at $5,900,” as Politico reported at the time. In 2020, an HHS inspector general report and a separate investigation by House Democrats found that Verma had spent millions on outside consultants, often to boost her own public profile. Verma also billed CMS $3,000 for a “girls’ night” party at the Georgetown home of USA Today’s Washington bureau chief, Susan Page. (Page later moderated the vice-presidential debate and belongs on a separate, but thematically similar, list.)

Congratulations, Seema Verma! May your time in the Trump administration hang around your neck like a millstone forever.

Sonny Perdue

Perdue is the secretary of Agriculture, and as such, helps set food stamp policy. And what is that policy? Let’s revisit 2019, when the Department of Agriculture first announced a trio of new food stamp rules branded as an attempt to encourage “personal responsibility” in the poor. The rules would have tightened work requirements and allowed states to raise eligibility standards for the food stamp program. The changes would save the federal government billions over time, Perdue boasted; meanwhile, hungry Americans would go without food. Analysis from the Urban Institute found that if the “changes had been implemented in 2018, 3.7 million fewer people and 2.1 million fewer households would have received SNAP, and annual benefits would have decreased by $4.2 billion.” A federal judge struck down one of those rules in October, Reuters reported.

Nevertheless, Perdue deserves to be remembered for what he tried to do: starve people.

Eugene Scalia

Trump pretends to be a friend of workers. In fact, he’s anything but, and Eugene Scalia (yes, one of those Scalias) has been an important weapon in the president’s war on labor. As Labor secretary, Scalia presided over a deregulatory push at the expense of unions and workers. The fate of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is a particular highlight of his tenure. Scalia ended a policy directing OSHA to generate negative publicity for dangerous employers. In April, The New Yorker reported, Scalia introduced a policy memo that would have relieved “the vast majority of employers of any duty to keep records about whether employees’ coronavirus infections were ‘work-related.’” Scalia later retracted that memo under pressure. But he’s already done plenty of damage. The number of federal workplace safety inspectors employed by OSHA is the lowest it’s been in 45 years. In the middle of a pandemic.

[richmeganews]

The Atlantic Politics & Policy Daily: The Final Countdown

What We’re Following Today

It’s Friday, March 29.

‣ Linda McMahon, a former pro-wrestling executive and the current head of the Small Business Administration, will reportedly resign from her position to chair President Donald Trump’s super PAC, America First Action.

Here’s what else we’re watching:

Will the Public Ever See the Mueller Report?: Attorney General William Barr said he plans to share with Congress Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report by mid-April, if not sooner. In his letter to Senator Lindsey Graham and Representative Jerry Nadler, heads of Congress’s two judiciary committees, Barr also said that he will not share the contents of the report with the White House before releasing it, and noted that his summary of the findings from last week was “not an exhaustive recounting” of Mueller’s report, which is nearly 400 pages long.

But that doesn’t mean the public will see the review in full, reports Natasha Bertrand. “Between the withholding of grand-jury and privileged material and the redaction of classified information, the public could be left with a shell of the original report.”

Listen to this week’s episode of Radio Atlantic, in which the staff writers Edward-Issac Dovere and McKay Coppins discuss what all this means for 2020.

Remember the Pee Tape?: Many of the president’s critics were disappointed last week when Barr declared that Mueller’s investigation all but cleared the president of wrongdoing. But the “seeds of the disappointment” were planted two years ago, when BuzzFeed News first published an unverified—and unverifiable—dossier compiled by the British-intelligence operative Christopher Steele, argues David Graham. The salacious document “set the stage for the political response to investigations to come—inflating expectations in the public, moving the goalposts for Trump in a way that has fostered bad behavior, and tainting the press’s standing.”

Call Me a Socialist!: Joe Sanberg, a multimillionaire investor, might be running for president.  Sanberg supports Medicare for all, the Green New Deal, increased regulation, and expanding the social safety net. He has no name recognition, but in an election where Trump has painted the Democrats as radical socialists, Sanberg thinks he has an edge: “Good luck to them if they want to call me a socialist, because businesspeople aren’t socialists,” he told Edward-Isaac Dovere.  

— Elaine Godfrey and Madeleine Carlisle

Snapshot

Three-year-old Ailianie Hernandez waits with her mother, Julianna Ageljo, to apply for the nutritional-assistance program at the Department of Family Affairs in Bayamón, Puerto Rico. The island’s government says it lacks sufficient federal funding to help people recover from Hurricane Maria amid a 12-year recession. (Carlos Giusti / AP)

Ideas From The Atlantic

Barbara Bush’s Long-Hidden ‘Thoughts on Abortion’ (Susan Page) “In 1980, when George H. W. Bush was making his first bid for the presidency, Barbara Bush covered four sheets of lined paper with her bold handwriting, then tucked the pages into a folder with her diary and some personal letters. She was trying to sort out what she believed about one of the most divisive issues of the day.” → Read on.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act Is Confusing Taxpayers (Mark Mazur) “Although the most recent IRS data show that average income-tax refunds are closely tracking the average refund from last year, taxpayers have been complaining in interviews with journalists and on social media that their refund is smaller than expected or that they unexpectedly owe additional tax. Given that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was all about tax cuts, how can this be?” → Read on.

Quit Harping on U.S. Aid to Israel (James Kirchick) “U.S. assistance to Israel demands far less—in both blood and treasure—than many other American defense relationships around the world.” → Read on.

What Else We’re Reading

‣ An Awkward Kiss Changed How I Saw Joe Biden (Lucy Flores, New York) ‣ Our President of the Perpetual Grievance (Susan B. Glasser, The New Yorker) (

Paywall) ‣ Former Trump Family Driver Has Been in ICE Custody for 8 Months (Miriam Jordan, The New York Times) (

Paywall) ‣ Is Pete Buttigieg a Political Genius? (Alex Shephard, The New Republic) ‣ The Blue State Trump Thinks He Can Flip in 2020 (Alex Isenstadt, Politico)

We’re always looking for ways to improve The Politics & Policy Daily. Comments, questions, typos, grievances and groans related to our puns? Let us know anytime here.

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[fullspectrum-cbd-oil]

US Mulls Paying Companies, Tax Breaks to Pull Supply Chains From China

U.S. lawmakers and officials are crafting proposals to push American companies to move operations or key suppliers out of China that include tax breaks, new rules, and carefully structured subsidies.

Interviews with a dozen current and former government officials, industry executives and members of Congress show widespread discussions underway – including the idea of a “reshoring fund” originally stocked with $25 billion – to encourage U.S. companies to drastically revamp their relationship with China.

President Donald Trump has long pledged to bring manufacturing back from overseas, but the recent spread of the coronavirus and related concerns about U.S. medical and food supply chains dependency on China are “turbocharging” new enthusiasm for the idea in the White House.

On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order that gave a U.S. overseas investment agency new powers to help manufacturers in the United States. The goal, Trump said, is to “produce everything America needs for ourselves and then export to the world, and that includes medicines.”

But the Trump administration itself remains divided over how best to proceed, and the issue is unlikely to be addressed in the next fiscal stimulus to offset the coronavirus downturn. Congress has begun work on another fiscal stimulus package but it remains unclear when it might pass.

The push takes on special resonance in an election year. While anti-China, pro-American job proposals could play well with voters, giving taxpayer money or tax breaks to companies that moved supply chains to China at a time when small business is flailing may not.

BIPARTISAN APPEAL

Both Republicans and Democrats are crafting bills to decrease U.S. reliance on China-made products, which accounted for some 18% of overall imports in 2019.

“The whole subject of supply chains and integrity of supply chains… does have a greater place in members’ minds,” Representative Mac Thornberry, the top Republican on the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee, told reporters May 7.

The medical supply chain and defense-related goods are top of the list.

“Coronavirus has been a painful wakeup call that we are too reliant on nations like China for critical medical supplies,” said U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham in a press release on Friday. He is expected to issue a new bill this week.

Republican Senator Josh Hawley is pushing for local content rules for medical supply chains, and “generous investment subsidies” to encourage increased domestic production of a range of goods and components. Republican Senator Marco Rubio introduced a bill May 10 that would bar sale of some sensitive goods to China, and raise taxes on U.S. companies’ income from China.

A bipartisan bill introduced by Democratic Representative Anna Eschoo and Republican Representative Susan Brooks would commission a panel to recommend ways to cut drug supply reliance on China.

Republican Representative Mark Green’s “SOS Act” proposes funding takeovers of vulnerable U.S. companies that are critical to our national security.

Lawmakers also hope to include reshoring provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, a $740 billion bill setting policy for the Pentagon that Congress passes every year.

PAY TO STAY

A controversial idea being floated in Washington would allocate as much as $25 billion to companies that make essential goods to move production home, ensuring that even products far down the supply chain were sourced domestically, according to two administration officials.

No lawmaker has publicly embraced it, but several congressional aides acknowledged it is part of the broader discussion in Congress. One of the administration officials said states could administer the funds through their separate economic development organizations.

That would be a boon for states that are struggling to pay their own bills after widespread lockdowns, plummeting tax revenues, and a huge surge in COVID-related costs, one state official said.

But given longstanding concerns about the government setting “industrial policy”, the notion of subsidizing industry directly is polarizing, even among Trump’s top advisers.

Outright subsidies are a non-starter, said one of the two administrative sources. “Internally some are questioning why we should be providing funds to companies that have left in recent years.”

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow has talked publicly about using tax incentives instead to prod U.S. companies to move some manufacturing home.

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro wants the federal government to buy more U.S.-made medical goods and drugs, but Trump has not signed an executive order Navarro is promoting.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and others favor building trusted networks of drug and medical suppliers, said two officials familiar with the discussions.

Giving federal dollars directly to companies to shift supply chains away from China would likely run afoul of World Trade Organization rules, and could discourage foreign companies from doing business in the United States, critics of the idea say.

The State Department, meanwhile, is working with other agencies and foreign governments to diversify American supply chains from China. “This includes returning manufacturing to the United States and expanding our base of international manufacturing partners,” said a spokesperson.

(Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk. Editing by Heather Timmons, Chris Sanders and Diane Craft)

from IJR https://ift.tt/36b22VM via IFTTT

[biofunmy]

DealBook Briefing: The Huawei Backlash Goes Global

Good Thursday. (Want this by email? Sign up here.)

The U.S.-China tech fight spreads

More companies around the world are realizing that they have little choice but to turn their backs on Huawei, as the tech rift between the U.S. and China widens.

Huawei’s blacklisting doesn’t just affect U.S. companies. “Under Washington’s export control guidelines, third-country suppliers to blacklisted entities need to apply for licenses if U.S. content exceeds 25 percent of the value of their products or services,” the FT explains. That has left companies scrambling to work out if they need to limit their sales to the Chinese company.

• The British semiconductor designer ARM said it would stop licensing technology to Huawei’s chip unit, because some of its designs contain technology from the U.S. And Panasonic has halted shipments of some components to Huawei for similar reasons.

• Mobile carriers in Britain have stopped offering Huawei phones to some customers, Amie Tsang of the NYT reports. Cellphone companies in Japan are considering similar moves. They’re concerned about Google pulling support for the phones; it has said it will no longer offer Huawei the full version of its Android operating system.

One glimmer of hope for Huawei: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest contract chip maker, said on Thursday that its shipments to HiSilicon, Huawei’s chip design affiliate, were not affected, Reuters reports. That’s crucial — Huawei would struggle to replace all the chips it uses with homegrown versions.

More: Here’s a breakdown of Huawei’s supply-chain issues, told through its flagship smartphone, the P30 Pro. And shares of Huawei’s suppliers have tumbled.

Trump’s finances edge toward the light

President Trump’s effort to keep his personal finances secret suffered two blows yesterday, as a federal judge and New York lawmakers authorized moves to make them public.

• A federal judge in Manhattan, Edgardo Ramos, blocked Mr. Trump’s bid to prevent Deutsche Bank and Capital One from complying with congressional subpoenas for the documents.

• New York State’s legislature approved a bill allowing Congress to see his state tax returns, which would largely mirror his federal ones.

These are “the most serious attempts to pierce the veil that surrounds Mr. Trump’s finances,” the NYT reports. “They increase the odds that congressional Democrats, who have become more vocal in their calls to undertake impeachment proceedings against the president, could enter such a fray with ample ammunition about Mr. Trump’s business dealings.”

Judge Ramos was torn. He agreed with Mr. Trump’s claim that turning over financial records to Congress could harm him and his family. But he said the congressional committees’ goals — to investigate potential money laundering — mattered more.

What can Mr. Trump do? He has already appealed a ruling that his auditing firm must comply with congressional subpoenas, so he’ll probably do the same with the Deutsche Bank decision. It’s less clear how he can contest the New York legislature’s maneuver, but he is sure to try.

Can companies weather the trade war?

That’s on the mind of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who said yesterday that he was personally questioning some of America’s largest companies about their plans for surviving the U.S.-China trade skirmish, Alan Rappeport of the NYT writes.

“I can tell you I am monitoring the situation very carefully,” Mr. Mnuchin said. He said he had spoken to Walmart’s C.F.O. this week, for example, to “specifically understand from Walmart what things they can source from other areas and what items they can’t.”

Mr. Mnuchin argues that “a lot of this business will be moved from China,” so tariffs won’t push up many consumer prices. But retail analysts point out that “companies cannot necessarily adjust their business plans as quickly as the trade winds blow,” Mr. Rappeport reports.

The outreach “underscores how sensitive the Trump administration is to the prospect of retailers raising prices and blaming the president’s tariffs as the election cycle draws near,” Mr. Rappeport writes.

More: China’s recent sale of $20 billion in U.S. debt has raised fears that Treasury bonds may be weaponized in the trade war. Could Beijing deprive the U.S. of rare-earth minerals? How traders are playing the trade fight. And China now has a trade war song. All together now: “Trade war! Trade war! Not afraid of the outrageous challenge!”

Qualcomm’s court loss could shake up 5G

The pending antitrust punishment could seriously undercut Qualcomm’s business model — and America’s bid to dominate next-generation 5G wireless technology.

Qualcomm “strangled competition,” according to Judge Lucy Koh of the Federal District Court in San Jose. She found it had made cellphone makers pay licensing fees even if they didn’t buy its chips, refused to license industry-standard patents and paid off device makers to “extinguish” legal action.

Her decision “directly undercuts” Qualcomm’s biggest business, the WSJ points out. “It could lower costs for Apple Inc. and other smartphone makers that have complained Qualcomm’s pricing tactics allowed it to profit off innovations, such as new displays or cameras, unrelated to its patents.”

Shares in Qualcomm tumbled nearly 11 percent yesterday. If the company’s licensing business gets held “to the letter of the law and what Koh has put forth, it’s devastating,” the analyst Christopher Rolland of Susquehanna International Group told the WSJ.

There could be political fallout, too. The Trump administration has deemed Qualcomm a vital player in America’s race against China over 5G, a field in which China is the other leading chip maker.

“We would not be surprised” if President Trump were to step in, Mr. Rolland wrote in a research note.

Deutsche Bank faces angry shareholders

The German lender’s annual investor meeting is today, and shareholders have plenty to complain about.

• Several investors will press the company to make deep cuts to its investment bank, which has struggled with high costs and underperformance.

• Deutsche Bank failed to merge with Commerzbank. Investors will want to know how it plans to shore itself up instead.

• The lender has also endured money-laundering scandals and questions about its relationship with Donald Trump. Just yesterday, it acknowledged that its anti-money laundering software had serious flaws. What’s it doing to clean up its act?

Many investors want to oust Deutsche Bank’s chairman, Paul Achleitner. He is likely to survive — just about — but the pressure for him to quit before his scheduled departure in 2022 is unlikely to let up.

And could there be a vote of no confidence in the management? Prominent advisory firms like ISS have argued that investors have suffered financially from Deutsche Bank’s scandals, so it’s possible.

It’s E.U. Election Day. Trade could suffer.

Populists on the left and the right are poised to make big gains in elections for the European Parliament today, possibly complicating trade negotiations with the U.S., Jack Ewing of the NYT reports.

Populist parties are expected to deny the two main centrist parties a majority in the European Parliament, according to estimates by Teneo, a management consultant. The centrist parties would then “have to cooperate with parties like the Greens, who are skeptical of trade deals with the United States,” Mr. Ewing writes.

“Right-wing politicians do not have a unified position on trade, but there is a strong protectionist faction. At the populist rally in Milan on Saturday, Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Rally party of France, drew applause with her call: ‘We reject uncontrolled free trade that helps only the banks and financiers.’ ”

And E.U. officials think that the U.S. is distracted from negotiations by its trade war with China. “We are ready from the E.U. side to start and we have the mandate,” Cecilia Malmstrom, the EU’s chief trade negotiator, said to reporters in Paris on Wednesday. “But I don’t think the U.S. is ready to start on the tariff negotiations.”

The man who hunts offshore cash

Bloomberg Businessweek takes a look at Gabriel Zucman, a 32-year-old professor who is one of the foremost experts on where the rich stash their cash.

• He has compiled evidence “that the world’s rich were stowing at least $7.6 trillion in offshore accounts, accounting for 8 percent of global household financial wealth.”

• “80 percent of those assets were hidden from governments, resulting in about $200 billion in lost tax revenue per year.”

• Mr. Zucman “has also found that multinational corporations move 40 percent of their foreign profits, about $600 billion a year, out of the countries where their money was made and into lower-tax jurisdictions.”

• Finding that data hasn’t been easy: “Tax collectors such as the IRS generally require taxpayers to report income, not wealth. And much of the world’s wealth is held in forms — homes, art, retirement accounts, non-dividend-paying stocks — that produce no income prior to a sale.”

• Leading Democratic lawmakers like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have all consulted with Mr. Zucman and his academic partner, Emmanuel Saez.

• Expect to hear more from the pair, who have written a book that many 2020 candidates will look to use in order to soak the rich. “The Triumph of Injustice,” to be published by W.W. Norton & Co. early next year, “focuses on how wealth disparity can be fought with tax policy.”

Revolving door

Ken Feinberg was named as the mediator for legal settlement talks involving Bayer’s Roundup weedkiller.

Amplo, a venture capital firm focused on international social problems, has hired the former Obama administration official Susan Rice as a board partner.

The speed read

Deals

• Avon confirmed that it will sell itself to Natura of Brazil. (Reuters)

• The activist hedge fund ValueAct has urged Merlin Entertainment, which runs Madame Tussauds and Legoland, to sell itself. (FT)

• UBS’s plan to turn around its investment bank is faltering. (FT)

• Saudi Arabia is in talks to buy American natural gas from Sempra Energy. (NYT)

• Colony Capital, the investment firm run by the Trump confidant Tom Barrack, plans to invest $5 billion in Latin America. (WSJ)

Politics and policy

• President Trump said that he won’t work with Democrats on an infrastructure plan until they stop investigating him. Relatedly: How “infrastructure week” became a political joke. (NYT)

• Three Democratic senators want to let customers sue companies for mishandling of data as part of a privacy bill. (Bloomberg)

• Harriet Tubman won’t be featured on the $20 bill until Mr. Trump leaves office, according to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. (NYT)

• How the White House is struggling to combat America’s fentanyl crisis. (WaPo)

Boeing

• The Federal Aviation Administration may require a long delay for recertification of the 737 Max jet. (FT)

• China’s three biggest airlines want compensation from Boeing over the grounding of the jet. (NYT)

• The executive in charge of Boeing’s 787 factory in South Carolina is out, after an NYT investigation into manufacturing standards there. (NYT)

Tech

• Amazon shareholders rejected proposals that it reconsider the social impact of its approaches to facial recognition and climate change. (NYT)

• Both Democrats and Republicans bemoaned the lack of regulation of facial recognition at a House committee hearing yesterday. (Wired)

• Hackers are holding Baltimore hostage. (NYT)

• Tech giants sought to assure lawmakers yesterday that they are doing enough to protect the 2020 elections from foreign influence. (Bloomberg)

• Tesla shares hit a 2.5-year low after Wall Street raised concerns about its financial health. And the safety of the company’s autonomous lane-change software is coming under scrutiny. (Business Insider, Consumer Reports)

• Google’s A.I. restaurant-booking service may be impressive, but it often needs human intervention. And the company’s advertising exchange is being investigated over whether it illegally accessed sensitive user data. (NYT, FT)

Best of the rest

• Minutes from the last Fed policy meeting show that officials are in no rush to change interest rates. (NYT)

• Shi Jianxiang, a Chinese fugitive, has been living the high life in L.A. (WSJ)

• Michael Avenatti, the onetime lawyer for Stormy Daniels, is now accused of stealing from her. (WSJ)

• What reparations for slavery might look like. (NYT)

• Women may work more effectively in warmer offices. (NYT)

Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow.

We’d love your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to business@nytimes.com.

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U.S. National Debt Hits $22 Trillion — A New Record That's Predicted To Fall : NPR

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U.S. National Debt Hits $22 Trillion — A New Record That's Predicted To Fall : NPR

Despite being in the second-longest economic expansion since the post–World War II boom, the U.S. is projected to rack up national debt at rates not seen since the 1940s. Here, the U.S. Treasury Department’s main building is seen in Washington, D.C.

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Despite being in the second-longest economic expansion since the post–World War II boom, the U.S. is projected to rack up national debt at rates not seen since the 1940s. Here, the U.S. Treasury Department’s main building is seen in Washington, D.C.

The U.S. government’s public debt is now more than $22 trillion — the highest it’s ever been. The Treasury Department data comes as tax revenue has fallen and federal spending continues to rise. The new debt level reflects a rise of more than $2 trillion from the day President Trump took office in 2017.

Despite being in the second-longest economic expansion since the post–World War II boom, the U.S. is projected to rack up annual deficits and incur national debt at rates not seen since the 1940s, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Over the next 10 years, annual federal deficits — when Congress spends more than it takes in through tax revenues — are expected to average $1.2 trillion, which would be 4.4 percent of gross domestic product. That’s far higher than the 2.9 percent of GDP that has been the average for the past 50 years.

“Other than the period immediately after World War II, the only other time the average deficit has been so large over so many years was after the 2007–2009 recession,” the CBO said last month.

Annual deficits and the national debt rose to new heights under the Obama administration, and the trend has continued under President Trump.

As a share of the U.S. economy, the national debt stood at 78 percent of GDP in 2018. But the CBO says it will rise to 93 percent by the end of 2029. Again, those numbers put the ratio at levels not seen since just after World War II.

“By 2029, debt is estimated to reach $28.7 trillion,” the CBO said in January, referring to federal debt held by the public — a figure that doesn’t include the billions of dollars that the government owes to itself. In recent years, those intragovernmental holdings have hovered well above $5.5 trillion.

“This milestone is another sad reminder of the inexcusable tab our nation’s leaders continue to run up and will leave for the next generation,” reads a joint statement from former GOP senator Judd Gregg and former Democratic governor Ed Rendell, the co-chairmen of the nonpartisan group Campaign to Fix the Debt.

Calling on Congress to cut into the national debt, Gregg and Rendell said, “The fiscal recklessness over past years has been shocking, with few willing to step up with a real plan. We need responsible leadership to fix the debt, not a worsening of partisanship.”

The U.S. hit the new height despite Trump’s promises on the campaign trail that he would reduce America’s debt load. Almost exactly four years ago, he said that if the national debt topped $21 trillion by the end of President Obama’s term in office, “Obama will have effectively bankrupted our country.”

The national debt nearly doubled under Obama: It was $10.6 trillion when he took office and was nearly $20 trillion when he left. The rise has been blamed on factors from the Great Recession to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and rising costs of Social Security and Medicare. Many of those pressures still exist today.

Trump has long said that he knows how to solve America’s debt problem. As he said in 2015, “When you have $18-$19 trillion in debt, they need someone like me to straighten it out.”

“@FoxNews: @realDonaldTrump: “When you have $18-$19 trillion in debt, they need someone like me to straighten it out” pic.twitter.com/hTUJ35ja0Q

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump)

On Jan. 20, 2017, the total amount of outstanding public debt was $19.9 trillion. On Monday, it surpassed $22 trillion. That’s despite Trump saying in August of last year that new tariffs on imported goods would let the U.S. “start paying down large amounts” of the national debt.

“The president is very much aware of the realities presented by our national debt,” White House budget director Mick Mulvaney said last October, when the government said the federal deficit had ballooned to $779 billion in the most recent fiscal year.

Mulvaney said the deficits would be offset by gains in economic growth; he also called on Congress to rein in what he called “irresponsible and unnecessary spending.”

The new data comes as Washington copes with the fallout of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history — and tries to avoid another shutdown by reaching a deal on Trump’s demands for a wall along the U.S. southern border.

The U.S. is entering new debt levels more than a year after Trump signed a $1.5 trillion tax cut that cut the top corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. The legislation also gave most U.S. taxpayers at least a small break, although the largest benefits went to the wealthiest Americans.

Republicans in Congress and the White House had predicted their late 2017 tax cut would boost economic growth and help create jobs. While the cut prompted the CBO to raise its GDP and job growth projections, as NPR’s Susan Davis has reported, “GDP growth is forecast to slow down after 2020, in part because all of this economic stimulus is likely to drive up interest rates.”

The CBO predicts federal spending will rise from 20.8 percent of GDP in 2019 to 23 percent in 2029, with programs such as Social Security and Medicare expected to spend more to cope with an aging population and rising health care costs.

Providing historical context for the current pattern, NPR’s Scott Horsley recently reported:

“The deficit typically grows during recessions — when tax receipts shrink and demand for food stamps and other government assistance rises — then falls during good times. The current spike in the deficit at a time of strong economic growth and low unemployment represents a break with that historical pattern.”

This content was originally published here.

[zarafoodrecipe]

Relocating jobs is only way to cut commute

The surging demand for Sydney trains simply reflects their massively subsidised low fares. With all NSW taxpayers footing an annual subsidy nearing $2 billion, fares only recoup a small proportion of operating costs. And this is before completion of new lines costing more than $30 billion. Retention of the current fare levels would then hike the annual subsidy to astronomical levels at which time our state government would likely privatise Sydney Trains and allow the new operator the monopoly to price gouge, as happens at Sydney Airport. Returning fares to break-even levels over time would pressure commuters to live closer to their work or schools, bring usage levels into line with competing options such as tollways, and provide Sydney Trains with the income required to properly maintain its impressive network.- Michael Britt, MacMasters Beach I'm guessing the people who are canvassing these price hikes haven't seen the inside of public transport for many years. Here's an idea to reduce passenger crowding at peak hours: provide more trains. Introducing a price hike in Australia's most expensive city will simply drive more people from our overcrowded trains to our overcrowded roads. - Penny Auburn, Newport There are at least two ways to reduce the peak-hour crush on trains. The first is for offices and businesses to change their working hours, either permanently or in rotation where some start work later than others. The second is to run trains more frequently. Statistics must exist that indicate the number of passengers exiting which trains from which lines at which time of the day. This would give an indication as to which businesses should be targeted for changing staff working times. - Anne Roberts, Leichhardt Folau has a right to air views I hope the Israel Folau saga does not herald the beginning of the end of democracy in this country ("I couldn't care less what Folau says, but the impact it can have is undeniable", May 3). Gay marriage is legal in this country with the protection of the law, but the right to disagree is absolutely necessary. A few years ago, gay marriage was legalised with 60 per cent of the population voting for it - meaning 40 per cent did not, for whatever reason. Should that 40 per cent be silenced? Personal liberty is the glue that holds a robust democracy together, not repression of points of view. - Roger Cedergreen, South Hurstville The LGBTQI community are not alone in feeling isolated, ridiculed, excluded and friendships curtailed because they are considered "different". Ask many committed Christians how they feel when they've worked in an office and witnessed the behaviour of their fellow colleagues towards them when they refused to condone extra-marital relationships, greed, fornication, dishonesty. Or what about the person converted to Christianity from another faith who has been disinherited and disowned? Christians are quite familiar with suffering for the sake of their beliefs. The treatment of Folau is just another example of what has been happening to Christians for 2000 years. - Nan Howard, Camden To see the Bible as historical evidence puts a different meaning onto "historical" and "evidence" than is customary (Letters, May 3). Your correspondent may be skilled in beliefs, faith, values and Biblical content, but his knowledge of contract law, which is the issue at hand, may be lacking. - Ian Muldoon, Coffs Harbour The reverend references my favourite oxymoron: biblical evidence. - Peter Moran, Oak Flats Electorate exile I first read Brian Pearn's article with smugness I am, after all, living east of the shire's great dividing line ("A dire Shire: seat of PM's power goes a bridge too far", May 3). But then I realised that Yowie Bay is right next to Gymea Bay, which makes me a western citizen of Cook: maybe we will be exiled in the next redistribution? But don't despair, Brian. Our PM travels west over that cruel border to the shire's real heart of Sutherland to participate in his church service every Sunday. You haven't been totally exiled from cultural wholeness. - Leanne Jarvis, Yowie Bay Brian Pearns is not the only one with reason to gripe over electoral boundaries. The seat of Warringah, heart of the insular peninsular, has spread its tentacles across the Spit Bridge and now has a stranglehold on Mosman. Not only does the area have to endure the hordes of Warringahite motorists clogging its roads, but it has to suffer the indignity of being identified as the same as its lead-footed invaders. - Graham Short, Cremorne I'm a voter in Scott Morrison's seat of Cook. He will more than likely be returned on May 18. My concern is how long will it be before we face a byelection, if the ALP wins government? I can't see Morrison enjoying the next few years on the opposition benches. What's his plan B? - Barry Ffrench, Cronulla Social media outs the bad apples How fascinating that election candidates are dropping like flies after evidence of their racist, sexist and homophobic views are found on social media ("Labor set to disendorse controversial candidate over offensive remarks", smh.com.au, May 3). This is a warning to people that what they post on social media will be there to haunt them for years to come. We always thought it may affect future job prospects and now we see it in action. - Pauline Paton, Centennial Park If any young person has aspirations to serve Australia as a parliamentary representative in future years they probably should have nothing to do with social media. - Patrick St George, Goulburn In the many years that I have been a voter, I have never seen a greater mess than that which has appeared in the current election. The main problem is the number of candidates who have been disendorsed or who are "under suspicion" by their party. The simplest solution is to permit polling booth officials to rule a line through the name of such candidates. This avoids creating wasted votes, that is votes for these people, and will also prevent the significant number of byelections that will almost certainly occur in the next 12 months. It may teach committees who pre-select these candidates to do their research more thoroughly. Many is the time when I have been a polling booth officer who wished that I had had something positive to do in the "quiet times" during voting. - Geoff Lewis, Raglan On another planet "A new nastiness", Tony Abbott (" 'A new nastiness': Police target offensive posters", May 3)? You cheerfully helped to lower the standards of campaigning when Julia Gillard was prime minister. Reap what you sow. - Sandra Willis, Beecroft And on the third week of the election campaign, Abbott uttered his 11th commandment: Thou shalt love thy neighbour more than thy planet ("Captain calls on powers of persuasion", May 3). That would be the very same planet that supplies the air we breathe and sustains all living things. - Renata Bali, Thurgoona Saving the planet or saving Warringah: it sounds like the arguments 200 years ago by those who opposed abolishing slavery. It would cost jobs on the docks and in the cotton mills economic madness. Morality eventually prevailed that time. - Susan Braham, Greenwich Abbott is quoted as saying "we subcontract too much out to experts already. Do we want experts to tell us what kind of cars to drive how big our cattle herds should be?". Clearly Abbott is not relying on any experts for his views on climate change. So what are his views based on? His gut feeling? - Anthony Drysdale, Bowral Win-win for childcare Quite apart from the fact that long-time-coming pay increases for childcare workers are well deserved they are also pivotal in obtaining the best for our children ("Childcare wages pledge would cost budget $1.6b", May 2). The best childcare workers use early educational practices and early intervention strategies which help reduce longer-term problems. A win on all counts. - Janice Creenaune, Austinmer Putting aid first Michael Fullilove points to stark differences in Labor and the Coalition's policy on aid ("A world of difference goes unnoticed", May 3) . Since coming to government, the Coalition's cumulative cuts to aid after inflation currently stand at 27 per cent with more cuts to come should they be returned to government. This is despite the "debt and deficit'' rationale for the cuts now being replaced by a promised budget surplus. It's worth noting that this year's budget also included cuts to some of the best performing DFAT programs in countries such as Indonesia, Bangladesh and Cambodia. Whilst a dollar increase has not been explicit, the 2018 ALP National Conference committed to increasing Australia's official development assistance as a percentage of Gross National Income every year that they are in office starting with their first budget, with stronger investment in their key priority areas of health, education, climate change, gender and infrastructure. Aid may not be a vote winner in this election, but given Australia is currently swimming against a tide of most donor countries increasing their generosity, the potential long-term reputational and practical impacts of continued cuts to aid should not be ignored. - Maree Nutt, Newport Reasoned thinking The statement "this is a free country" is frequently quoted by all and sundry, so why should voters not be free to prepoll vote when it suits them (Letters, May 3)? Standing in a long queue on polling day, especially if very hot or pouring with rain does not appeal to everyone. Votes cast prepoll may also be more reasoned and less influenced by the wild promises handed out in the final days of a campaign. - Stephanie Edwards, Roseville I imagine the Electoral Commission isn't much interested in being "more stringent" about verifying people's claims to be entitled to vote early. And rightly so. Provided people do it on or before polling day, does it really matter when and why? - Adrian Connelly, Springwood Unsung heroes of healthcare We're always hearing that cuts in hospital funding undermine patient care, as in the battle between public hospitals and private health insurers over who should pay for their treatment. But I was fortunate enough to experience the finest of care at Royal North Shore public hospital in Sydney recently when no mention was made of hospital funding issues. The 40 medical staff's job prescription could have read "need to be superheroes and be on alert to save lives every second". These unsung heroes, including the nurse practitioners, pharmacists, specialists and transplant coordinator, looked after me unbelievably well and I will be grateful to them forever more. - Louise Darmody, Waverton Send Archibald packing David Wenham, a supporter of the Wayside Chapel and all-round decent bloke, is shown in a thoughtful pose in Tessa Mackay's portrait ("More wrinkles please: actor's feedback packs winning punch", May 3). Is he perhaps wondering if the upcoming election will deliver a kinder, gentler society? Probably as slim a chance as a Packing Room Prize winner winning the Archibald. - Joan Brown, Orange No Packing Room Prize winner has gone on to win the Archibald Prize. Is the reason snobbery? The panel of judges would baulk at voting for an entry that has won the Packing Room Prize. - Kim Woo, Mascot Sanger slang Snags? Sangers? I went to the butchers the other day and asked for half-a-dozen snarlers (Letters, May 3). To no avail: I had to translate. That's what we called sausages in New Zealand - well, back in the day at least. - Paul Hewson, Clontarf Initial misgivings For a change, I felt I had a chance of completing Friday's cryptic crossword when the letters DP appeared in the top right hand corner. Usually, the only clue I can solve is DA - Don't Attempt (Puzzles, May 3). - William Galton, Hurstville Grove Postscript There's sticking your head in a bear's jaw, and then there's accusing the ABC of bias. Peter Smith's complaint of a "relentless anti-Coalition campaign" by the national broadcaster attracted much furious disagreement, some like-minded assertions, and questions for us here holding the ring. "Why would you publish a letter with such a totally unsubstantiated assertion?" challenged Jeff Siegel, of Armidale. To which we say: since we are canvassing a topic so firmly in the eye of the beholder, we require no more examples from Peter than we would seek from, say, someone attributing bias to an arm of the press owned by a certain US citizen. Not until we get more column space, anyway. Some balance is available to Malcolm Freak's "Coalition bingo" from Rosemary O'Brien: "In four minutes flat, Labor luminaries will mention: climate change, Turnbull's sacking, the big end of town, non-taxpaying multinationals, penalty rates, indulged retirees, Dutton and Abbott, water neglect, hospitals and health, and a huge grant to something worthwhile. They'll religiously steer clear of Adani and Bill's lack of popularity." Stopwatches have now been put away. A loss in the Letters family: "My father James Prior of Sylvania Waters passed away on Tuesday," advised Michael Prior. "He had over 100 articles published in the Herald and The Australian beginning in the 1950s. His articles were generally about forgotten Australian women. He achieved the trifecta with a letter in Good Weekend, the Herald and The Sun-Herald in one weekend. He earned a PhD at 85 and was given the added bonus of an Honorary Column 8 PhD. Many readers will remember his letters as witty and often controversial. I'm sure he will be missed by many." Our condolences, with gratitude. Mark Sawyer, Letters co-editor To submit a letter to The Sydney Morning Herald, email letters@smh.com.au. Click here for tips on how to submit letters. Most Viewed in National Loading https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/relocating-jobs-is-only-way-to-cut-commute-20190503-p51jvc.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_feed

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Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/republicans-get-marco-rubio-back-tax-bill-winners-losers/

Republicans get Marco Rubio back on tax bill: Winners, losers

Marco Rubio decided to add a little drama for the Republicans troubled $1.5 trillion tax plan, but he got a better child tax credit bringing everything together. Even Tennessee's Bob Corker is putting his support behind the bill. On Friday, as details emerged about the final bill, it became clear that the agreement would provide slightly more generous tax breaks to low- and middle-income Americans by reducing some benefits for higher earners, one of several tweaks intended to solve the budget problems standing between the bill’s passage and President Trump’s desk, according to people briefed on the final plan.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Rubio said the senator would vote yes on the legislation, given the changes that were made. The final bill will allow families who owe no federal income taxes to still claim up to $1,400 of the $2,000 child tax credit, up from $1,100 in the original version.

https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/941748393772224513

The bill’s text, which was signed by Republican negotiators from the chambers’ conference committee on Friday, includes few major changes from the version that passed the Senate earlier this month. The 2025 expiration date for the individual tax cuts remains, as does the estate tax, which would apply to fewer Americans down the road. At the center of the $1.5 trillion bill are large tax cuts for corporations and other businesses, which Republican lawmakers say will create jobs, investment, and economic growth.

Compared to the Senate bill, the revised legislation would lower some thresholds for entering a higher individual marginal tax bracket. For example, the top bracket for a married couple filing jointly would begin at $600,000 a year, down from $1 million in the Senate bill.

[pdf-embedder url="https://movietvtechgeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/december-2017-republican-tax-bill-latest-changes.pdf" title="december 2017 republican tax bill latest changes"]

Owners of so-called pass-through businesses, who pay taxes on their profits at the owner’s individual tax rate, would receive a slightly less generous tax break than the original bills called for, allowing a 20 percent deduction on profits they earn. That deduction would phase out — with some exceptions — starting at $315,000 of income for couples. The Senate bill included a larger deduction, 23 percent, and a higher phase-out point, $500,000 for couples.

Two newly revealed changes on the business side would help offset revenue losses: a provision that would allow corporations to deduct 80 percent of their net operating losses in the future, down from 90 percent in the Senate bill, and one that would effectively reduce the annual value of research and development tax breaks starting in 2022.

In changes revealed earlier this week, the bill would reduce the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from a high of 35 percent today; the Senate and House bills had lowered the rate to 20 percent. It also allows taxpayers to deduct up to $10,000 a year in state and local taxes — a mix of property taxes and either income or sales taxes paid — in a bid to blunt tax increases on higher-earning workers in high-tax states such as New York and California.

The bill appears to be heading toward the finish line but at least three other Republican senators remained publicly undecided on Friday, including Mike Lee of Utah, who has allied with Mr. Rubio in pressing for an expanded child credit, and Jeff Flake of Arizona, who has been trying to extract commitments from Republican leadership related to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program. Senator Susan Collins of Maine has also expressed reservations about the bill’s reduction in the top individual tax rate and pushed for party leaders to support measures to bolster individual health care markets as a condition for her vote.

Ms. Collins’s office said on Friday that she had not yet seen the final bill. A spokesman for Mr. Flake said the senator was undecided.

Mr. Lee, in a statement, sounded upbeat about the bill, saying Mr. Rubio and other senators “have done a tremendous job fighting for working families this week and they have secured a big win.” He added: “I look forward to reading the full text of the bill and, hopefully, supporting it.”

Mr. Trump, when asked about Mr. Lee and Mr. Rubio on Friday, said he had no concerns about their support.

“I think they’ll be great,” he said. “They’re great people. They want to see it done. I know them very well. I know how they feel. These are great people and they want to see it done, and they want to see it done properly.”

Mr. Trump also told reporters he had seen the bill, and he liked it.

“I have seen it,” Mr. Trump said in brief remarks at the White House. “I think it’s going to do very, very well. I think that we are going to be in a position to pass something as early as next week, which will be monumental.”

So who are the winners and losers in the latest version of the Republican's tax bill?

Winners — Many individual taxpayers, including the richest. The bill would cut individual tax rates and double the standard deduction to $12,000 for single people and around $24,000 for couples. That would mean a tax break for most Americans, at least in the next few years. Late in the game, GOP leaders cut the rate for top earners to 37 percent (from the current 39.6 percent). — Wealthy heirs. The estate tax threshold would get doubled to about $11 million for individuals and $22 million for married couples. Those whose inheritances would exceed those exemption levels would still get hit, since the plan wouldn't end the estate tax as the House wanted, but there aren’t too many of them. — Corporations and other businesses. The top corporate rate would move down to 21 percent from 35 percent, and shareholders and others with investment income would see their tax bills cut by one-third or more. Owners of businesses that are taxed at the same rates as individuals, from the corner grocery to the Trump Organization, would see their effective tax rate drop to less than 30 percent, at most, from as high as nearly 40 percent. — Big U.S. companies that operate globally, like Apple and Microsoft. The United States would follow most other industrialized countries in switching to a "territorial" tax system, where overseas profits aren't taxed at home. They'd also get a low, one-time tax rate when they bring home profits they're holding abroad. However, that tax would be larger than expected, and they would face complex rules meant to discourage them from moving more money and operations abroad. — Certain investors, particularly private equity firms. Investment fund managers wouldn’t have to reclassify their "carried interest" compensation — the share of investor profits that they get — from lower-taxed capital gains to ordinary income. Despite President Donald Trump's vow to end what some consider a loophole, the only new limit fund managers would face is the amount of time they have to hold assets to qualify for the lower rate — three years instead of one year under current law. — People with high medical expenses and adopted children. Taxpayers would be able to deduct the costs of medical expenses that exceed 7.5 percent of their adjusted gross income for this tax year and next. In 2019, the threshold would return to 10 percent, its current level. House Republicans had proposed fully scrapping the deduction. A credit for adoptions also remains on the books, a provision that the House had also targeted for elimination. — College students and K-12 teachers. College loan interest would remain deductible, and tuition waivers for graduate students wouldn’t get counted as taxable income. Both had been on the chopping block. But an excise tax on large college endowments is expected to remain in the tax package, which opponents are saying could hurt college scholarships going forward. For lower levels of education, teachers would still be able to deduct some of their out-of-pocket expenses for school supplies they buy their students. — Local governments, hospitals and housing. The legislation would preserve the tax-deductible status of private activity bonds. They are used by state and local governments for infrastructure, by hospitals that want to expand and for building affordable housing. — Businesses that invest in equipment and other capital. Major manufacturers would benefit the most from a provision that would let businesses immediately write off the cost of new investments, known as full expensing. It would be on the books for five years before beginning to wind down under the bill, but backers expect it to get extended. — GOP brass: Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are finally checking a legislative victory box as the bill speeds across the finish line with seemingly minimal resistance. They spent months trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act but couldn’t do it, and now they’re on the verge of eliminating a big part of it — the requirement for everyone to have health insurance — in the tax bill. Expect them to tell voters ahead of next year’s midterm elections that the tax cuts are growing the economy and everyone wins. But ... Losers — Top earners who live in high-tax states like New York, New Jersey, and California. No one would more acutely feel the loss of the federal deduction for all state and local taxes and the new $750,000 cap on the home mortgage interest deduction, down from $1 million. A compromise on SALT would allow taxpayers to deduct property taxes and either income or sales taxes, with a combined limit of $10,000. But some lawmakers, particularly from the Northeast, still say it's not enough for many of their constituents. Bottom line: The amount of their income that is taxable would increase. Homeowners, mostly on the East and West coasts, could see their home values decline. It would also affect infrastructure and public services such as education, according to Americans Against Double Taxation, since raising revenue needed to fund the costs of governance would be harder if residents can no longer write off all state and local taxes. — Certain service providers. Some pass-through businesses, including doctors and lawyers, would be precluded from the lower tax rates on pass-through income. — Workers who depend largely on wages. Many of them would get a mostly minimal decrease in their marginal tax rate, compared to contractors and the self-employed. This is due to the changes in taxation of pass-throughs, and some tax experts say people would try to game the system to take advantage of the pass-through deduction. — Deficit hawks. The tax plan was built with a $1.5 trillion budget allowance for tax cuts that didn’t require offsets, which advocates have said would mostly be made up by revenue from economic growth. But a host of official estimates and outside analyses have shown otherwise, and there’s certainly concern that the real cost of the package would exceed that $1.5 trillion when individual tax cuts that are only scheduled to run for eight years get extended as expected. — Preachers who want to politic from the pulpit. The long-standing ban on churches and other religious organizations endorsing political candidates would continue, despite an attempt by the House to use the tax bill to repeal it. Many evangelical Christian groups have been lobbying for years to get rid of the prohibition, and Trump had vowed earlier this year to "totally destroy" it. But the Senate parliamentarian ruled the repeal doesn’t meet the chamber’s rules, and so it was jettisoned.

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[djgblogger-blog]

How the tax bill opens wide a big back door to overhaul health care

http://bit.ly/2ByanSI

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in a Nov. 30, 2017 photo as he talked to small business owners about the tax bill. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

The U.S. Senate on Dec. 2 passed its version of one of the most sweeping tax reform bills on a party-line vote of 51-49. After reconciliation with a House version, the bill is expected to be passed into law by the end of the year.

The process and content of the legislation is largely reminiscent of the previous efforts by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act: limited hearings, limited analysis, limited participation and limited transparency. By providing various concessions, Senate Republican leadership was able to convince its three holdouts from the bill that would have gutted the Affordable Care Act from earlier this year: Republican Senators John McCain of Arizona, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine. “Tax reform” essentially morphed into the functional equivalent of this summer’s “skinny repeal” version of “repeal and replace.”

As a professor of health policy, I see this “tax reform” as “health care reform” by another name. We may simply have seen the opening of the door for much more far-reaching efforts to transform American social programs over the coming years.

Effects beyond Obamacare

The most obvious effect of the Senate tax reform bill is the repeal of the individual mandate established by the Affordable Care Act. The provision required most Americans to obtain insurance coverage or pay a fine and has long been the most disliked component of the ACA.

While perhaps the least liked part of the ACA, the mandate serves as a crucial component to stabilize insurance markets around the country. It was crucial because it limited the potential for something called adverse selection, whereby only the sickest individuals, usually those with high medical costs, sign up for insurance. Without a requirement to carry insurance, and with insurers required to offer insurance to all comers, healthy individuals are likely to only sign up when they get sick if there is no mandate.

Without the requirement to purchase insurance, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that 13 million fewer Americans will have health insurance. Potentially, and equally significant, insurance markets will likely be further destabilized. Insurance companies may decide to further reduce the number of policies they offer in the insurance marketplaces, or even stop offering policies. As a result, potentially millions of Americans could be left without options to purchase insurance.

Without further actions, the bill would also trigger an automatic reduction in Medicare spending of US$500 billion over 10 years. Republicans would have to pass separate legislation, with Democratic support, to avoid this scenario.

Moreover, the Senate’s tax reform also does more subtle things, including reducing the incentives for pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs for rare disease. It also extends taxes to graduate student tuition waivers and eliminates the student loan interest deduction, both crucial for future physicians and researchers.

In the long run: Starving the beast?

However, while the effects of the legislation, if enacted, will be felt immediately, the most crucial implications may lie in the future. The tax bill is projected to add $1 trillion to the federal deficit. As a result, Republicans will likely move to cut funding to all of America’s social programs, from food stamps to Medicare and Social Security, with privatization being the final goal.

This is consistent with long-term goals of the Republican Party. Going back to the New Deal and the Great Society, large parts of the GOP have been opposed to the creation and extension of social programs like Social Security and Medicare.

President Reagan celebrates with his staff in the Oval Office the passage of Federal Tax Legislation, the first of the two ‘Reagan cuts’ (July 29, 1981). Ronald Reagan Library

Yet, once enacted, the programs largely proved incredibly popular. Historically, they became virtually impossible to undo because of large popular and interest group support.

Because those programs proved impervious to frontal assault, Republicans have opted for a backdoor strategy.

First, they have sought to reduce the ability of government to raise revenues. Over time, accumulating deficits and debt would inevitably trigger the need for adjustments to either taxes or social programs.

They then could implement the second step. Figuring that Americans would be loathe to give up their tax cuts, Republicans would then be able to cut and potentially privatize even the most popular social programs.

In short, they would force reductions in social spending by reducing the ability of government to fund these programs, a strategy that has been called “starve the beast.”

The first major success using this strategy was the indexing of tax brackets in the 1970s. Previously, government tax receipts had grown implicitly as inflation pushed taxpayers into higher tax brackets. To a large degree, Democrats had not been required to raise taxes for social spending.

When indexing and cuts did not prove enough to trigger major reductions in social programs, Republicans, and many conservative Democrats, pushed through major cuts under the Reagan and Bush administrations.

Yet, Republicans had not expected the public’s reaction: Taxpayers wanted their cake and to eat it, too; taxpayers loved their reduced taxes, but the demand for social spending went unabated. The results are obvious today: Federal deficits cumulative driving the national debt above $20 trillion, or 106 percent of GDP.

Fast-forward to 2017. Republican efforts to undo the ACA have gone significantly beyond the Obama administration’s signature accomplishment and include transformational changes to the Medicaid program. Talk about privatizing Social Security and Medicare has also been common.

Republicans have not able to accomplish any of it outright. But further increasing the federal deficit may just be enough to make significant changes to our nation’s social programs. Republican leaders are doubling on down on their strategy. Starving the beast may finally work.

Health care will change

The changes to the health care of many Americans potentially ushered in by tax reform are significant and damaging. Many Americans will lose access to health insurance, costs are projected to increase and fewer individuals will be able to afford getting an education. People will be hurt.

The long-term implications may be even more significant and culminate in transformational changes to American social program not seen since the 1960s. If successful, Republicans may prove successful in their long-running quest to undo the health protections the country has had since the New Deal and the Great Society.

Simon Haeder does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

[garynsmith]

Senate passes tax reform bill following flurry of last-minute amendments

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With a flurry of last-minute amendments designed to woo waffling Republican Senators, including a $10,000 deduction for state and local property taxes, the Senate worked into the early morning hours today, Saturday, December 2, to pass a historic and divisive tax reform bill that will have sweeping impacts on the nation and the real estate industry.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell held a press conference shortly after passage saying the bill would provide “substantial relief to the middle class,” an assertion disputed by the bill’s critics, including a rare critical op-ed from the editorial board of The New York Times.

The legislation, the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” passed along largely party lines, 51-49 (Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee voted against it). Lawmakers will now be tasked with reconciling disparities between this tax reform bill and the one that passed in the House last month, before ushering joint legislation onto President Donald Trump by the end of the year.

GOP Senators Jeff Flake of Arizona, Steve Daines of Montana and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin voted in favor of the bill following weeks of opposition stemming from issues involving pass-through entities and deficit threats. With pass-throughs, in particular, tax deductions increased from 17.4 percent in an original draft of the bill to 23 percent on Friday, apparently satisfying Johnson, the wealthy owner of a plastics manufacturing company who lobbied hard for greater deductions.

According to a tweet Friday by Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, at least 30 new amendments wound up in the revised bill, ranging from a request for “pass-through deductions for distributions from publicly traded partnerships” to a provision from Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska that would “improve employer credit for paid family and medical leave.”

“This is so bad,” McCaskill tweeted on Friday. “We have just gotten list of amendments to be included in bill NOT from our R colleagues, but from lobbyists downtown. None of us have seen this list, but lobbyists have it. Need I say more? Disgusting. And we probably will not even be given time to read them.”

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This is so bad. We have just gotten list of amendments to be included in bill NOT from our R colleagues, but from lobbyists downtown. None of us have seen this list, but lobbyists have it. Need I say more? Disgusting. And we probably will not even be given time to read them. http://pic.twitter.com/Mn0i56JeZg

— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) December 1, 2017

For real estate professionals, the elimination of state and local property tax deductions was a major point of contention, with the National Association of Realtors (NAR) warning that the provision, combined with a House plan to reduce the mortgage interest deduction by half, would drastically chip away at property values and deter sales activity. But in a last-minute bid to woo moderate Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a $10,000 state and local tax deduction was added into the Senate tax reform legislation,

She was able to extract this notable change: allowing taxpayers to deduct up to $10,000 in local property taxes instead of a complete repeal of the state and local tax deduction.

— NPR (@NPR) December 1, 2017

Last month, NAR characterized both bills as “an assault on housing,” and broadly condemned numerous provisions that would either increase taxes on homeowners or provide fewer cuts than renters. In particular, NAR President Elizabeth Mendenhall lambasted the House proposal to lower mortgage interest deduction from $1 million to $500,000, but they reserved plenty of ire for the Senate bill, which includes tenure requirements that could expose homeowners to tens of thousands in new capital gains taxes.

The dilution of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and the repeal of student loan interest deductions and moving expense deductions were also cited as dangerous by the group.

“This is about a lot more than the mortgage interest deduction,” said Mendenhall during the press briefing in early November. “Instead it’s about a very fundamental question of whether or not we want to be a nation of renters or do we want to be a country of homeowners?”

Email Jotham Sederstrom

from Inman http://ift.tt/2noEom0 via IFTTT

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

At first glance, adding a provision to the Senate tax bill that would repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate seems like a huge political risk for Republicans. On second glance, “blunder” might be a more accurate assessment.

Why? Because Republicans, who were already advancing a tax bill that was not particularly popular but had some momentum toward passage, are now mixing the politics of Obamacare into this process. The GOP efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which lasted from March through September, were politically unpopular and ultimately unsuccessful. Instead of keeping the focus on tax policy, they will now have to overcome the same obstacles that tanked their health care plans.

There is an obvious policy rationale for their move. Republicans are trying to find ways to raise government revenue to limit how much the federal deficit would increase if their proposed tax cuts for both individuals and corporations went into effect.

In a report this month, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that repealing the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate (the requirement that people purchase health insurance or pay a fine) would save the government $338 billion over the next 10 years. That’s because without the requirement, the CBO calculates that 13 million Americans would not get any insurance, thereby saving the federal government from the costs for people whose coverage (either via Medicaid or the health care exchanges established under Obamacare) is heavily subsidized by taxpayers.

Also, Republicans generally hate the idea that the federal government is forcing people to buy health insurance.

And it seems like that might be an aspect of Obamacare where voters agree with Republicans. Polls show that many Americans oppose the individual mandate and that it is far less popular than two other key provisions in the Affordable Care Act: the requirement that insurers not charge higher prices or reject people with pre-existing conditions and the part of the law that expands Medicaid to millions of people. There is also some dispute about the policy impact of the mandate: Do some people choose to buy insurance only because they’re required to do so or are they making that decision based on other factors as well, particularly the cost of their coverage?

At the same time, there could well be costs to repealing the mandate. The CBO estimates that scrapping it would increase premiums by 10 percent for those who remain in the Obamacare marketplaces (primarily because some healthier people would forgo insurance, meaning that the Obamacare marketplaces would have a larger share of people with expensive health needs). And experts say health insurers might choose to leave the Obamacare marketplaces if the mandate is eliminated.

And there are two constituencies that argue that unraveling the individual mandate is a terrible policy move: liberal activists and the health care industry. They could now be energized to step up attacks on the tax bill. It’s hard to measure this precisely, but the intensity of the opposition whipped up by liberal groups like MoveOn.org and Indivisible seemed to complicate the failed Republican effort to repeal Obamacare. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine was literally cheered by constituents as she emerged as one of the leading Republicans against the legislation.

That liberal opposition was buttressed by health care policy groups such as the American Heart Association and the American Hospital Association, which argued that the Obamacare repeal bills were flawed policy that would worsen Americans’ health insurance.

Again, this is hard to measure, but the opposition to the GOP tax plan, at least so far, did not seem to be galvanizing rank-and-file Democratic activists like the fight to protect Obamacare did. Since news broke that the Senate GOP tax bill might repeal the mandate, liberal groups are already trying to generate opposition to the tax bill by linking it to the defense of Obamacare.

Then there’s the issue of finding enough Republican votes, given that the Democrats are almost sure to continue their universal opposition to a bill that axes Obamacare provisions. So far, there are only about 11 Republicans in the House and none in the Senate who seem to truly oppose the tax plan — without the Obamacare provision. That leaves enough members to pass the legislation.

But 20 House Republicans voted against Obamacare repeal. Anywhere from three to nine Republicans voted “no” on the various repeal bills that came up for a vote in the Senate. We don’t know if these members will view repealing the individual mandate as something akin to repealing Obamacare. Collins in particular focused much more on defending Medicaid and pre-existing condition coverage than the mandate when she joined John McCain of Arizona and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska in voting against the GOP’s most recent Obamacare repeal effort. So this is not a one-to-one comparison. But at first glance, the Republicans have greatly added to the number of members who might vote against the tax bill by sticking a partial Obamacare repeal in it. On the tax legislation, the House can afford only 22 Republican “no” votes, while the Senate can afford only two.

In the Senate, members who looked likely to be most resistant to the tax plan before this individual mandate provision was floated are basically the same bloc that opposed Obamacare repeal. But in the House, the members could well be different. The House members who opposed Obamacare repeal were a fairly diverse group in terms of ideology and geography, while the ones who are wary about this tax bill so far are heavily from New Jersey and New York, where residents may face higher taxes because the bill limits deductions for state and local income taxes. Republicans in the House might have up to 25 potential “no” votes right now (combining the group that opposed the ACA repeal and those already opposed to the tax bill, minus the members who are in both groups).1

Republican leaders in the Senate have promised, after the tax legislation, to take up the bipartisan so-called Alexander-Murray bill that is supposed to help shore up the Obamacare markets — which could help bring members like Collins on board. Democrats had previously supported that legislation but have suggested that they will withdraw that support if the individual mandate is eliminated. Unlike the tax bill, which can pass the Senate with 51 votes,2 Alexander-Murray would require 60 votes to pass, so unified Democratic opposition would kill it. And Alexander-Murray might not address the challenges created by eliminating the mandate. So it’s not totally clear whether Collins and her colleagues would consider a vote on Alexander-Murray sufficient to address her concerns.

Another potential issue for Republicans is that President Trump has been touting the idea of adding Obamacare repeal to the tax plan for days now. Why is that a problem? Well, by taking one of Trump’s ideas, party leaders could be encouraging the president to get more involved in crafting a tax bill — and there is little indication so far in his presidency that Trump’s input is helpful to getting complicated bills passed on Capitol Hill. Secondly, if Republicans determine later on that this idea doesn’t work in terms of policy or can’t get the votes to pass a bill, they could face mocking from the president via Twitter, as they did as the Obamacare repeal efforts failed.

So I’m skeptical about this idea. But I do understand why Republican leaders are headed in this direction. Republicans plan to use the savings from a repeal of the individual mandate in part to increase the child tax credit, a move aimed to placate senators like Kentucky’s Rand Paul and Florida’s Marco Rubio, who have suggested that the tax legislation is not giving enough benefits to middle-class families. So chucking the mandate may help win their votes. And Democrats may have a harder time getting people as excited to “defend the mandate” as they did to “save Medicaid.”

Either way, dear reader, you are not experiencing déjà vu. The Republicans in Congress really are talking about repealing some parts of Obamacare. Again.

[fraggie-doodles19]

The Senate convened at 10:30 a.m. Thursday to continue discussing the bill after it passed a procedural vote on Wednesday. Debate is limited to 20 hours, and Republicans are still talking about changes to their tax plan before its final approval.

• Though Republicans sound optimistic, party leaders still do not have firm commitments from enough senators to ensure the bill will pass.

• Senator John McCain says he’ll vote ‘Yes’ on Senate tax bill, but Senator Susan Collins of Maine says she is still not committed to voting for the bill.

• Main areas of contention are whether to include a trigger to offset deficit impact and how low to make the corporate tax rate.

McCain says he will vote ‘Yes’

Senator John McCain, the Republican from Arizona who was the deciding vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act, said on Thursday that he will vote in favor of the Senate tax cut bill.

“I believe this legislation, though far from perfect, would enhance American competitiveness, boost the economy, and provide long overdue tax relief for middle class families,” Mr. McCain said in a statement.

Mr. McCain was seen as a wild card because of his willingness to buck his party’s leadership in the health care vote earlier this year. He also voted against big Republican tax cut packages in 2001 and 2003.

Some Republicans were worried that Mr. McCain could vote against the bill because of his sour relationship with President Trump. But Mr. McCain said that he was satisfied that the tax overhaul went through “regular order” in the Senate, with sufficient public hearings and opportunities for amendments.

While he said he remained concerned about the deficit and acknowledged that the tax bill is not perfect, Mr. McCain said that on balance it would be good for the country.”It’s clear this bill’s net effect on our economy would be positive,” Mr. McCain said.

Collins weighs in on tax bill.

Senator Susan Collins remains a key senator to watch, given she has yet to commit to the bill and could be the deciding vote between a tax bill that passes and one that fails. On Thursday, Ms. Collins outlined some of her priorities and concerns at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.

On her vote:

Ms. Collins said she remains concerned about the impact of the Senate plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act mandate that most Americans buy insurance or pay a penalty and also wants to ensure that taxpayers can continue to deduct some state and local taxes, a provision known as SALT.

“The SALT amendment is extremely important to me. The health care agreement is extremely important for me. It would be very difficult for me to support the bill if I do not prevail on those two issues,” she said.

Ms. Collins said that as of Thursday morning she was optimistic about the measures after conversations with President Trump and Senate leaders.

Still, “I am not committed to vote for this bill because who knows what is going to happen on the Senate floor.”

On the trigger:

“I want to see what the trigger is looking like. It’s gone through several iterations and it’s still under negotiation.”

Ms. Collins said she had concerns that if economic growth does not meet expectations, the trigger would be a gut punch to the economy at precisely the moment programs like Medicaid and unemployment compensation are most needed.

“You don’t want to raise taxes if the economy is going into a recession. That’s the worst thing you could do.”

On the corporate tax rate:

Ms. Collins said she was open to nudging the corporate tax rate above the 20 percent currently envisioned in the Senate bill.

“I don’t think we need to go to 20 percent on the corporate tax side,” she said. Senators have begun discussions about raising the rate to 22 percent, which would still be a bit cut from the current 35 percent corporate tax rate.

On automatic spending cuts that could be required by tax bill:

“I strongly oppose that. I have written a letter to Mitch McConnell asking what is the plan to avert that. I met with Senator McConnell just yesterday and he has assured me that will not be allowed to happen.”

Ms. Collins said she expected that a waiver of the so-called PAYGO requirements would be included in a year-end spending bill.

On an amendment that would close the carried interest loophole:

“I would make refundable the tax credit for child or adult dependent care. I would pay for it by closing the loophole on carried interest.”

The Senate version of the bill would not end the loophole but would simply extend the minimum holding period for investments that qualify for the tax break to three years from one.

Republicans promoted the “virtues” of their tax plan.

The Senate cleared a procedural hurdle on Wednesday with its vote to begin debating the tax bill, and early remarks from lawmakers offered a preview of what that debate will probably center on.

“This is an historic day as the Senate begins consideration of tax reform that will help boost America’s economy, that will create more jobs and that will leave more money in people’s paychecks,” said Senator Michael B. Enzi, Republican of Wyoming and the chairman of the Budget Committee.

Mr. Enzi offered a warning about the coming debate.

“You’re probably going to hear a lot of screaming going on in speeches this week,” he said. “Please don’t confuse volume with veracity or truth.”

But Democrats had a very different take.

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee, offered another kind of warning.

“The Senate is 20 hours of debate away from a broken promise of truly historic proportions,” he said on Wednesday. This year, he said, was supposed to be when “the working people of America regained a powerful voice in Washington.”

“Instead of a strong voice, what they got instead was a big con job,” Mr. Wyden said. “If this Republican tax bill passes, Washington is going to reach into the pockets of working Americans and cut a big check to multinational corporations, to tax cheats and to the politically powerful and well-connected.”

McConnell optimistic ahead of vote.

On Thursday morning, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, expressed optimism about passing the tax overhaul.

“We’re on the cusp of a great victory for the country,” he said, adding that Senate Republicans were “headed toward the finish line either late tonight or early tomorrow.”

Schumer urges Republicans to work with Democrats.

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, criticized Republicans for how they had undertaken the tax overhaul, complaining that they had shut out Democrats as they put together their bill.

Mr. Schumer said the Republican tax bill had made “a mockery of the legislative process,” and he pleaded for Republicans to work with Democrats on taxes instead of moving forward with the current tax plan.

“If my Republican friends close the door on their partisan tax bill tonight,” he said, “they will find an open door for bipartisan tax reform tomorrow.”

The president is not happy with The New York Times.

President Trump criticized The New York Times on Thursday in a pair of early morning Twitter posts about its coverage of the Republican’s tax plan.

“The Failing @nytimes, the pipe organ for the Democrat Party, has become a virtual lobbyist for them with regard to our massive Tax Cut Bill,” Mr. Trump wrote in one of his posts. An editorial criticizing the Senate tax bill was published Wednesday online and in Thursday’s print editions. The Editorial Board, which writes editorials, is separate from the newsroom.

The president also accused the news organization of violating its own social media guidelines after the NYT Opinion account shared on Twitter the phone numbers for two Republican senators’ offices. However, as one senior Times editor posted in a tweet, “The president is mistaken.” The guidelines, designed to avoid bias in social media posts, do not apply to the Opinion department’s posts.

“I was a co-author of the expanded social media guidelines. They apply to the NYT newsroom, not to NYT Opinion,” Cliff Levy, a newsroom deputy managing editor, tweeted in response to the president’s post.

The Times echoed that in its own Twitter post.

Mr. Trump himself received criticism for publicly sharing a phone number. He once gave out the cellphone number of Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, during the 2016 presidential campaign.

The White House says the President will sign the tax bill.

The administration pledged official support on Thursday for the tax bill pending in the Senate, an unsurprising move that confirmed Mr. Trump’s promise to a Missouri crowd on Wednesday that he would sign the bill if it reached his desk.

“The Administration strongly supports Senate passage” of the bill, officials wrote in a statement of administrative policy, because it would reduce taxes for businesses and middle class families and simplify the tax code. The statement also praised provisions in the bill to repeal the individual health insurance mandate under the Affordable Care Act and to open part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling.

If the bill were presented to Mr. Trump, the statement said, “his advisors would recommend that he sign the bill into law.”

Here’s what comes next.

The complaints from Mr. Wyden and other Democrats carry limited weight because Republicans can — and plan to — pass their bill without any Democratic votes.

Republicans are using special procedures that shield the measure from a Democratic filibuster. Debate on the legislation is limited to 20 hours. When the debate ends, it will be time for a vote-a-rama, a marathon of amendment votes. Eventually, the Senate would vote to pass the tax bill.

But before then, the contents of that bill are expected to change.

Republicans have been discussing significant revisions to their bill as party leaders try to secure the votes they need for passage. Those discussions will continue on Thursday as the debate plays out on the Senate floor.

[gabbykaufman]

A year in the life of Donald Trump, and the country

(Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

When Donald Trump became the president-elect one year ago, his elated supporters and his crestfallen detractors had two very different ideas of the president he would become.

Those aboard the Trump Train had elected a president who declared, “I alone can fix it,” and they took him at his word.

He would provide “great health care at a fraction of the cost.” He would be “the greatest jobs president that God ever created,” by bringing back dying industries like coal mining and manufacturing. He would “rebuild” the U.S. military and “take care” of veterans. His “big, beautiful” wall along the border would halt illegal immigration, and Syrian refugees would no longer be allowed to enter the country.

Those who had opposed Trump the candidate were horrified at the prospect of him taking office. To them, Trump had campaigned on a dystopian vision of America, and his promises — to crack down on immigration, reverse Obama-era policies and pursue an isolated “America First” agenda — were more like threats. They predicted the possibility of nuclear war, a prospect Trump has done little to ward off by provoking the volatile leader of North Korea.

Of the two opposing visions of Trump’s presidency, neither has been fully borne out by events. It was probably unrealistic to expect him to repeal and replace Obamacare on “Day One” of his administration, but we’re now up to Day 291 and counting. His promise to push for a constitutional amendment setting term limits for members of Congress seems to have fallen through the cracks, along with getting rid of gun-free zones near schools. Tax cuts and infrastructure spending, signature initiatives during the campaign, are, respectively, a work in progress and a can in the process of being kicked down the road.

Nevertheless, Trump has been busy in the White House, when he’s not golfing. Here’s a partial list of his accomplishments and disappointments:

President Donald Trump applauds new Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch during a public swearing-in ceremony for Gorsuch in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Monday, April 10, 2017. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP)

Judicial appointments One of the Trump administration’s earliest concrete victories, and one the White House still cites as proof of his effectiveness, was the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. When Justice Antonin Scalia died in February 2016, Senate Republicans refused to even hold a hearing for President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland. During the campaign, Trump released a list of potential nominees, promising conservatives he would replace Scalia with someone from the pool. Within weeks of his inauguration, he picked Gorsuch, who was confirmed in April.

In addition to the Supreme Court, Trump has stacked the federal benches with his picks. Last week, after four confirmations, Trump thanked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for helping to confirm federal judges “at a record clip,” which he said amounted to the courts “rapidly changing for the better!”

Failure to repeal and replace Obamacare One of Trump’s signature campaign promises was quality health care for every citizen at a reduced cost. This, he claimed repeatedly, would be accomplished by repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature healthcare legislation. Although Trump and many congressional Republicans campaigned at least in part on a repeal-and-replace platform, the effort has been shelved after a series of defeats.

A House bill was pulled by Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., in March because it lacked support. In May, the House passed a bill, and Trump hosted a premature celebration in the White House Rose Garden. However, the Senate rejected it and opted to write their own version instead. In July, Republican Sens. Susan Collins, John McCain, and Lisa Murkowski sank the latest effort, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said it was “time to move on” to other parts of the GOP agenda. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy, sensing one last opportunity, introduced their repeal bill in September, but a vote was never held after it failed to garner the necessary support.

Former FBI Director James Comey is sworn in during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on Capitol Hill, Thursday, June 8, 2017, in Washington. (Photo: Alex Brandon, Pool/AP)

Comey’s firing and Mueller’s appointment In May, Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey, who had become a bogeyman for the Democrats for his public updates on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as secretary of state.

Trump originally cited a Justice Department memo criticizing Comey’s handling of the investigation as the reason for his dismissal, but he later admitted he had already decided to fire Comey and hinted in an interview with NBC News “this Russia thing with Trump and Russia” influenced his decision.

Meanwhile, Comey had been keeping notes of his interactions with the president, including one conversation where Trump allegedly said, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.” More damningly, Comey contended Trump asked him to ease off former national security adviser Mike Flynn. After his dismissal, Comey testified he gave the memos to a friend to leak to reporters, in hope that it would trigger the appointment of a special counsel. Shortly after Comey was fired and the New York Times published the contents of the memos, Robert Mueller was tapped to lead the investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election.

Mueller has brought federal charges against Paul Manafort, a former Trump campaign chairman, and Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy and business partner. A former campaign foreign policy aide, George Papadopoulos, has already pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia.

Continued pressure on ISIS and bombing of Syria Trump vowed to “bomb the s*** out of” ISIS during the campaign, and he has made gains in taking down the terrorist organization. In October, U.S.-backed forces declared the end of “major military operations” in the retaking of Raqqa, Syria, the putative capital of the “Islamic state” declared by ISIS.

Trump said capturing Raqqa meant “the end of the ISIS caliphate is in sight,” and claimed credit for the victory. However, former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter denied the Trump administration had radically changed the U.S. military’s tactics in fighting ISIS. He said the capture of Raqqa was the result of a plan that “was laid out two years ago, and has been executed pretty much in the manner and the schedule that was foreseen then.”

In a departure from Obama-era policy, however, Trump authorized a missile strike on a Syrian airbase, in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that killed at least 80 and produced horrifying footage of civilians struggling to breathe and move and foaming at the mouth. The action against the air base from where the attack was launched constituted an escalation of American involvement, as no direct military action had been taken against the Syrian government until then.

(Photos: Getty Images)

West Wing and Cabinet exits The team around Trump in the White House today is markedly different than the one with which he began his term in January. National Security Adviser Mike Flynn resigned after just three weeks, following reports that he had discussed U.S. sanctions with the Russian ambassador and lied about those interactions to the vice president. Other high-profile White House exits included the departures of deputy chief of staff Katie Walsh, communications director Mike Dubke, press secretary Sean Spicer, assistant press secretary Michael Short, chief of staff Reince Priebus, communications director Anthony Scaramucci, chief strategist Steve Bannon, and deputy assistant to the president Sebastian Gorka. Health and Human Services secretary Tom Price resigned under fire after reporting by Politico revealed he had spent over $1 million in taxpayer money on chartered planes.

EPA turmoil Trump appointees have dramatically overhauled and shrunk several Cabinet agencies. Scott Pruitt, in his former job as attorney general of Oklahoma, had sued the Environmental Protection Agency 13 times before he was tapped to lead it. He has attempted to transform the EPA by scaling back its regulatory footprint and shutting out environmental groups from policy-making in favor of industry executives and lobbyists. A report on his daily schedule by the New York Times found Pruitt “has held back-to-back meetings, briefing sessions and speaking engagements almost daily with top corporate executives and lobbyists from all the major economic sectors that he regulates — and almost no meetings with environmental groups or consumer or public health advocates.”

Pulling out of Paris climate agreement and Trans-Pacific Partnership As a candidate, Trump denounced the previous administration’s approach to international affairs as weak and promised to make better “deals” for the country. He put his money where his mouth is on two: the Paris climate accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Days after inauguration, Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the U.S. from TPP, a trade deal negotiated under Obama. Technically, though, the agreement hadn’t yet taken effect and still had to be approved by congress.

Trump also pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement, a 2015 deal that established voluntarily goals for countries to curb harmful emissions. When Trump announced the U.S.’s withdrawal, Nicaragua and Syria were the only countries in the world not part of the agreement. Both have since signed on, leaving the United States the only non-member.

Tangles with courts The Trump agenda has been largely stalled in Congress, with no health care, infrastructure, or tax reform bills passed, and he has turned to executive action to realize some of his other priorities.

Most notably, Trump has attempted to implement three versions of his travel ban, which barred Syrian refugees and citizens from several majority Muslim countries from entering the U.S. After a court ruling struck down the first iteration, Trump signed what he called a “watered down, politically correct version” that would last 90 days. After that second version expired, another guidance was set to take its place that would have banned travelers from Syria, Libya, Iran, Yemen, Chad, Somalia, North Korea and Venezuela. A federal district court judge in Hawaii largely stayed the order, leaving in place the restrictions on travel from North Korea and Venezuela.

Trump announced on Twitter that the U.S. military would not accommodate transgender soldiers, but a federal judge ruled the current policy should stand. The Trump administration position, the judge said, signaled the “disapproval of transgender people generally,” adding that banning and discharging transgender troops would be have more of a negative effect on the military than allowing them to serve.

Stock market rally and falling unemployment Trump ran in part on his business acumen and his understanding of the financial world, and indeed the stock market has risen and the unemployment rate has fallen since he took office.

The 20 percent rally in the S&P 500 and the 30 percent rise in the Dow have sent markets to record highs, and the president plainly said recently “the reason [the U.S.] stock market has been so successful is because of me.”

Similarly, unemployment is down to 4.1 percent, although Trump previously preached skepticism of jobs numbers — before they could be credited to him.

Escalation in tensions with North Korea Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un have repeatedly provoked each other, with the latter ordering numerous missile tests, including some that have flown over Japan. They’ve traded verbal insults too: Trump branded Kim “Little Rocket Man,” and Kim lobbed back with the archaic slur “dotard.” Moreover, Trump has undermined Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s diplomatic efforts toward North Korea, tweeting that Tillerson is “wasting his time trying to negotiate” with Kim. One day before the anniversary of his election, Trump was in South Korea, warning Pyongyang that aggression toward the South would be a “fatal miscalculation,” while putting in a plug for the golf course at his New Jersey resort.

[nothingman]

Source: SAUL LOEB / Getty

In a tight 51-50 vote, the Republican-dominated Senate voted to start the process of repealing Obamacare. Only two Republicans—Susan Collins (Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska)— sided with Democrats, leaving Vice President Pence to break the tie.

According to CNN, as the vote began, protesters in the Senate gallery shouted “kill the bill” and “shame, shame, shame!”

JUST IN: Protesters disrupt Senate health care vote with chants of "kill the bill!" and "shame, shame, shame!" https://t.co/bUeCnVw0tL

— CNN (@CNN) July 25, 2017

There was hope that Republican Arizona Senator John McCain, who was recently diagnosed with brain cancer, would have a change of heart, understanding the irony of fighting for his life with the help of quality insurance, all while stripping away health care for millions of Americans. But that was not the case—he voted “aye” for a bill.

Had McCain voted “no,” the bill would have been killed in the water. As CNN noted, the next step is floor debate on the legislation to repeal former President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which has helped millions of Americans gain access to coverage over the years. Yet it’s unknown if there will be enough Republican votes to pass the bill when it’s time to be voted in as law.

Even worse: No one know really knows what’s in the bill. It’s speculated that it will include massive cuts to Medicaid, defund Planned Parenthood and set serious roadblocks for those with pre-existing conditions. But time will only tell.

Shortly after the vote, McCain oddly took to the Senate floor to blast the same bill he voted to move forward. The Hill reported that he stressed he would not vote the repeal bill into law and urged both sides to work together on health care reform.

“Let’s trust each other. Let’s return to regular order. We’ve been spinning our wheels on too many important issues because we keep trying to find a way to win without help from across the aisle,” McCain said.

He added: “We’ve tried to do this by coming up with a proposal behind closed doors in consultation with the administration … asking us to swallow our doubts and force it past a unified opposition. I don’t think that is going to work in the end. And it probably shouldn’t.”

But talk is cheap Sen. McCain and your actions spoke volumes today:

When John McCain dies, after living a life lengthened by his good health coverage, remember his cowardice today. #NotaHero

— Awesomely Luvvie (@Luvvie) July 25, 2017

McCain has just disgraced himself…again.

— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) July 25, 2017

Quit calling McCain heroic. He has govt.-funded insurance. He's returning to help pass a ghoulish bill that will kill people. #KillTheBill

— Brent Anderson (@AndBrent) July 25, 2017

The “pro-life” party is voting to rip healthcare from moms, children, cancer patients, rape survivors… the list goes on. #KillTheBill http://pic.twitter.com/BYPplpMKF7

— NARAL (@NARAL) July 25, 2017

John McCain left hospital stay paid by taxes on flight paid by taxes to remove health insurance from taxpayers. And we paid him to do it.

— Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) July 25, 2017

GOP: Come over

MCCAIN: I can't, I have brain cancer

GOP: We need your vote to strip millions of their health coverage

MCCAIN: http://pic.twitter.com/8nSgQbprfP

— ken klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) July 25, 2017

John McCain interrupted his recovery from brain cancer to help advance a bill to take away health care for others? http://pic.twitter.com/nFXm2unD5s

— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) July 25, 2017

Maybe cancer patients who lose insurance can read about all the gov-paid treatment McCain has received for decades. #placebo

— Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff) July 25, 2017

To be clear, I don't wish death upon McCain. I'm not glad he has cancer. I hope he recovers so he can promptly go fuck himself. That's all.

— Imani Gandy (@AngryBlackLady) July 25, 2017

President Trump, who has not passed one major legislation in his six months in office, looked at today’s vote as a victory.

“I’m very happy to announce that with zero of the Democrats’ votes, the motion to proceed on health care has moved past and now we move forward toward truly great health care for the American people. We look forward to that. This was a big step,” Trump said at a White House news conference.

“I want to thank Sen. John McCain,” he added. “A very brave man. He made a tough trip to get here.”

As California Senator Kamala Harris pointed out, whether it’s a flat out repeal or a repeal and replace situation, the American people are the ones who will lose out in the end.

RELATED NEWS:

#IAmAPreExistingCondition: Twitter Blasts GOP For Passing Cruel Health Care Bill

GOP Senator John McCain Diagnosed With Brain Cancer

Trump Says Obamacare Has Been A ’17-Year-Old’ Nightmare

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via HelloBeautiful