CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow endorses tax-cut plan, “warts and all”
Larry Kudlow, the well-known CNBC commentator, sums up the sentiments of most Republicans regarding the tax bill:
Warts and all, if I were a voting member of Congress, I would certainly cast a “yea” vote for the tax-cut plan passed by the Senate and House and headed for conference (to work out minor differences) in the weeks ahead.
These bills are not perfect, especially on the individual side. But the business tax cuts will generate an investment boom in the years ahead. And those cuts will bring economic growth back to its historical norm of 3 to 4 percent.
There’s an amusing back story as to how the Republican fence-sitters in the Senate were converted to supporting the tax bill. The New York Times, which has become more a Progressive lobbying group than a newspaper with professional standards, organized its readers to bombard the fence-sitters with Times‘ talking points customized to each legislator’s vulnerabilities. A New York Sun editorial tells the story of how the Times‘ advocacy so badly backfired:
Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins will vote for the tax-cut plan
“In Mrs. Collins’ case, it focused on Obamacare, telling its readers to the call the senator and ask her to oppose the tax bill because it would repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate. Suddenly, Mrs. Collins realized that the individual mandate was itself a kind of tax. So she voted against a measure she once was for.
“In the case of Senators Flake, McCain, and Moran, the Times’s lobbying focused on the deficit. It warned that the bill would “add more than $1.4 trillion to the deficit over 10 years without helping the middle class.” Did the Times reckon these paragons of parsimony would shrink from adding to the deficit a trillion and a half dollars over a decade? Hah! They had just waltzed through the Obama presidency, when $7.9 trillion was added to the national debt — in a scant seven years.
“Suddenly a light went off in the heads of the wavering senators. If the tax bill would add $1.4 trillion to the deficit over 10 years, that means the amount it was adding to the deficit each year was only $140 billion. For a senator, that’s chicken feed.”
Chief Justice Roberts saved Obamacare by declaring its mandate a tax
Obamacare is indeed a tax. A famous Supreme Court decision declared it so to save it from being declared unconstitutional and nullified.
The just-passed Senate version of the tax bill must now be reconciled with the earlier House version in conference committee. This chart outlines the major difference between the two versions, together with annotations by the Heritage Foundation as to its preferences.
More evidence the Mueller investigation is a political hit job and should be terminated
There have been two important turning points in Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation of alleged Trump campaign collusion with Russia during the 2016 election. The first was Mueller’s indictment of Manafort, timed to steal thunder from the Republican House victory in passing its version of the tax reform bill. The second was Mueller’s announcement that Flynn admitted he was guilty of lying to the FBI. This announcement was timed to undercut the Republican Senate’s victory in enacting its version of the tax reform bill.
Is Mueller saving his next major announcement for when the House-Senate reconciliation of the separate tax bills is completed?
There are more serious doubts regarding the probity of the Mueller investigation — namely, growing evidence of the Obama administration’s corruption of the FBI and Justice Department and the fact that many of the corrupted officials remain in the FBI to this day.
Although one of these officials, former FBI director Comey, has been fired and is seething with unseemly anger, others, such as Peter Strzok, were removed by Mueller from his investigation only in the face of imminent public exposure of Strzok’s
- Partisan pro-Clinton, anti-Trump views,
- His role in the botched Hillary Clinton email investigation,
- His role in the Russian-sourced anti-Trump Steele dossier, and
- An extra-marital affair he is alleged to have been having with another anti-Trump member of Mueller’s investigatory team.
Mueller and the FBI have been stonewalling every attempt of Congressman Nunes to elicit testimony and documents regarding FBI handling of the Clinton email server and Russian collusion investigations, which raises further suspicions as to what is being concealed.
Defense attorney and Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz
As for Mueller’s conveniently timed Flynn mea culpa, top defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz ridicules this latest achievement of the Special Counsel.
As for the press impact of Mueller’s Flynn announcement, ABC News’ Brian Ross made a fool of himself by falsely announcing that
“Flynn would testify that Donald Trump had ordered him to make contact with Russians about foreign policy while Trump was still a candidate. The report raised the specter of Trump’s impeachment and sent the stock market plummeting.” (Fox News)
The fake news was picked up and published by other major media until ABC retracted the report later in the day. Ross has since been suspended by ABC for four weeks without pay.
hat tip: Eaglebeak
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