Republicans are busy engineering a debt-financed tax cut.  That’s right; the federal government will be borrowing to pay for tax cuts that mainly benefit the wealthy and cash-rich corporations.  GOP politicians spent eight years lambasting President Barack Obama for deficit spending.  But they have no concern about running up huge deficits under President Donald Trump.  They just casually lie and say the tax cut will pay for itself with economic growth even though tax experts scoff at their claim.

This is what I want to know:  Why should our children and grandchildren be saddled with more debt in order to give corporations a tax cut?   Interest rates are relatively low.  If the demand for products and services is there, why shouldn’t companies be willing to borrow to expand their businesses?  I’m betting that House Speaker Paul Ryan and his caucus don’t have a good answer.

With unemployment around four percent and the economy perking along, Wall Street economists are concerned that more economic stimulus will result in higher inflation and Fed rate hikes.  This would increase interest payments on the national debt and add to the deficits.  But here’s the thing; runaway deficits don’t concern many conservatives.  They will use them as a pretext to slash spending on entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.  But that’s another story.

Fortunately, the tax cuts can be fixed in the future; and unless the GOP is able to fill Congress with senators like Alabama senate candidate Roy Moore, I don’t think they will be able to accomplish their goal to decimate the social safety net.  But Trump’s Friday night speech in Pensacola, Florida raises concerns of a much higher level.  And it should chill all democracy loving Americans to the bone.

Trump’s ramblings were mostly to support Roy Moore. This is the guy who allegedly preyed on teenaged girls while he was in his 30’s.  If true, this alone should bar him from the Senate.  But there are many other good reasons to make sure Moore is never elected to Congress:

He was twice-removed from the Alabama Supreme Court for refusing to obey a federal court order and a law regarding gay marriage.  Over the years he has expressed his beliefs that homosexual conduct should be illegal, that kids in drive-by shootings are acting like animals because evolution taught them they come from animals, that Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) should not be allowed to serve in the U.S. House because he is a Muslim, and that Obama was not born in the United States.  Another statement he made mirrored one made by Trump; he put the U.S. on the same level as Russia in doing “bad things” and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Of course, Trump didn’t highlight any of Moore’s faults.   But he did mock Hillary Clinton — which of course prompted the crowd to chant, “lock her up!  lock her up!”  In that context he told the crowd, “Look, it’s being proven we have a rigged system.  Doesn’t happen so easy. But this system, there will be a lot of changes.”

Referring to Washington he said, “They will lie and leak and smear, because they don’t want to accept the results of an election where we won by a landslide.”

He criticized the Democratic “resistance” to his presidency saying, “They’re resisting the will of the American people — that’s what they’re resisting.”  Later he said, “They are resisting progress. They’re resisting change. Because the only thing they really care about is protecting what they have been able to do, which is really control the country and not to your benefit.”

But worst of all was Trump’s disgraceful take-down of American institutions: “This is a rigged system. This is a sick system from the inside. And, you know, there’s no country like our country, but we have a lot of sickness in some of our institutions, and we’re working very hard. We’ve got a lot of them straightened out, but we do have — we really do — a rigged system in this country, and we have to change it. Terrible. Terrible.”

It is difficult to know what Trump is talking about when he speaks.  His mashed-up logic and fractured sentences defy analysis.  At rallies like Pensacola he likely says whatever pops into his head.  And his mouth is as disorganized as his thoughts.  So when he talks about sickness in “our institutions” is he referring to the courts, the media, the Congress, what?  Well, I think he’s referring to any institution that challenges his will.

David Brooks, the well-known conservative columnist and talk-show guest, published a column last week entitled, “The GOP is rotting.”  In it he wrote, “There is no end to what Trump will ask of his party. He is defined by shamelessness, and so there is no bottom. And apparently there is no end to what regular Republicans are willing to give him. Trump may soon ask them to accept his firing of Robert Mueller, and yes, after some sighing, they will accept that, too.”

Brooks may be right about firing Mueller.  And if so, I think our only chance to remain a democracy is if the GOP becomes so rotten it crumbles.  Let’s pray that Trump and his Republican enablers don’t destroy our republic before that happens.

My last blog attempted to inject a little humor in the news, which admittedly is abysmal.  It is my sense that people are getting so depressed by the news that they can’t deal with it anymore.  But we can’t let a feeling of hopelessness prevail or Republicans will succeed with their egregious policies like cutting taxes for the wealthy and politicizing the federal judiciary.

Federal courts are the keystone of the Constitution’s separation of powers.  When the executive branch or the legislative branch infringes individual rights we citizens have the courts to redress our grievances.  But what if the courts become tools of the controlling political party?  That not only could happen, it’s already happening.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is an unscrupulous, power-hungry politician who will do anything to retain his leadership status and promote the Republican Party, mostly in that order.  After Barack Obama was elected in 2008 Minority Leader McConnell devised a plan to thwart everything President Obama attempted.

For years McConnell blocked many of Obama’s choices for executive branch positions and federal judgeships.  Finally, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) implemented the so-called “nuclear option” in 2013 for executive appointments and lower court nominations.  This prevented McConnell from using a filibuster to obstruct Obama from filling federal court vacancies for a time.

When Republicans took control of the Senate in 2014, however, McConnell had complete control of the agenda.  This culminated with his blocking of Obama’s appointment of Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court vacancy created by Justice Anthony Scalia’s death.  Some Republicans in Congress even threatened to block Hillary Clinton’s nominations to the Supreme Court had she won the presidency.

McConnell’s strategy paid off big when Donald Trump won last November.  President Trump has an unprecedented opportunity to appoint hundreds of federal judges, including several Supreme Court justices.  In fact, Trump’s only significant win after a year in office has been Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.

Now Trump and McConnell are attempting to fill federal court vacancies ASAP and the primary qualifications seem to be white, male and very conservative.  The Trump administration no longer allows the American Bar Association to vet nominees before they are announced and several approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee under chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) were evaluated by the ABA as “unqualified.”

Both Democrats and Republicans have tended to nominate justices that were more inline with their political philosophies over the years but never in such a blatant attempt to ensure that judicial decisions are based on politics instead of the law.  Moreover, today’s conservative objectives are less about small government, fiscal restraint and balanced budgets and more about outlawing abortions, quashing gay rights, preventing immigration and promoting so-called religious freedom.

Republicans have switched from controlling spending to controlling peoples’ lives and imposing their social conservative views on the populace.  That is a dramatic and ominous pivot and I believe they intend to totally use the courts to accomplish their objectives.

Loading the federal courts with unqualified, far-right conservatives is threatening enough but congressional Republicans may attempt a much more ambitious goal by expanding the number of judges on the appellate courts.  That would enable Trump to appoint conservative majorities on all of them.

Steven G. Calabresi, a law professor at Northwestern University and board chairman of the conservative Federalist Society, has authored an article entitled “Proposed Judgeship Bill.”  In it he recommends that the Republican-controlled Congress double or triple the number of judges on the federal appellate courts and add hundreds of federal district court judgeships.  Calabresi brazenly stated his objective: “undoing the judicial legacy of President Barack Obama.”

Conservative media is rife with conspiracy theories and no doubt there are some from the left too.  Well, here is one from the center — and I think it has legs:  Conservatives are conspiring to virtually eliminate the Democratic Party and all liberal influence on government policies.  They are seeking a one-party government of the wealthy, a plutocracy.  And there is ample evidence of this.

Republican controlled states used the 2010 census to engage in radical redistricting that almost guaranteed Republican control of state congressional delegations.  After the conservative majority on the Supreme Court substantially gutted the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Republican-controlled states enacted strict voter ID laws that make voting harder for minorities and other typical Democrats.  And now the Justice Department under far-right Attorney General Jeff Sessions has stopped challenging these states’ efforts to suppress voting rights.

The Supreme Court currently has a conservative majority but just think of what will happens to our constitutional rights if all federal appellate courts have conservative majorities?  The answer is quite clear.  Radical conservative policies will be imposed on we the people.

The political upheavals of the 1960s, with Vietnam and assassinations, were horrific; Watergate revealed corruption and criminality at the highest levels of government; and the costly invasion of Iraq was probably the worst foreign policy decision in the nation’s history.  But none of these past earth-shaking upheavals fundamentally threatened our democracy.  What Trump and the GOP are doing to undermine the Constitution by politicizing the courts definitely does — and it’s a clear and present danger.

So Don’t be anxious, be angry.  Don’t be depressed, be dedicated to challenging Republican legislative abominations; and donate to organizations that oppose them.  Now is a time for redoubled action, not resignation.

No kidding, it’s getting difficult to write this blog without becoming depressed.  The news can drive one to drink – which isn’t all bad.  But like many folks, you’re probably avoiding TV and the Internet more these days.  So no offense if you just delete all political emails and avoid political blogs.  I understand.  But bear with me for a bit; I promise to keep it mostly light.

In reading news articles and researching the factual claims that politicians make it becomes obvious that some of them miss the bullseye on the truth target and some miss the target altogether.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) railed that the GOP tax plan is “kicking” 13 million people off their health insurance.  No doubt repealing the Obamacare individual mandate will cause some number of healthy people to voluntarily drop their insurance coverage and that will raise premiums for others.  It’s these less healthy people who find their policies too expensive to afford that are being forced out of the insurance market.  The Washington Post fact checkers gave Schumer two Pinocchio’s for this mislead.

On the other side of the isle, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who supports repeal of the individual mandate, said: “One of the things I hope we do as part of this tax process is repeal the tax on poor Americans. Right now, about half of the people that pay the penalty under the individual mandate are people who make $25,000 or less”

Like Schumer’s comment this one begged for a fact-check and it wasn’t long in coming.  The debunk of Cornyn’s claim is too complex to provide in detail but the Washington Post gave Cornyn two Pinocchio’s because he used “an incomplete statistic that lacks significant context.”

Cornyn is a white-haired, sort of grandfatherly looking guy who appears quite believable.  But when talking about Obamacare or the GOP tax plan he lies with the best of them.  I prefer liars who clearly look like liars, say — for example — President Donald Trump.

The new numbers are out on Trump’s prevarications.  The Washington Post has documented 1,628 false or misleading statements from El Presidente in his first 298 days in office.  That’s an average of over five per day.  Wow, Trump really has set a new record for something.  Is there a Liars Hall of Fame?

Those who are turned off by the news may have missed a photo of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and his wife Louise Linton – who was very expensively attired — holding a sheet of newly printed one-dollar bills.  They were the first to bear Mnuchin’s signature.   One sarcastic critic observed they were “picking up some toilet paper;” another chided that they looked like villains in a James Bond film.  I guess even the ultra-rich have bad hair days.

Mnuchin is just one of many billionaires in Trump’s cabinet but another one made the news last week too, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross.  Evidently Ross – and I’m being kind here – didn’t tell Forbes magazine the whole truth about his wealth.  As a result, Bloomberg Billionaires Index lowered his net worth from $3 billion to $860 million.  The story is more sinister than just that slap in the face, but I’m wondering if Trump will boot Ross off the cabinet because he no longer meets the qualifications.

Trump campaign officials like Jared Kushner and Attorney General Jeff Sessions seem to have a bad case of amnesia.  They don’t recall anything investigators want to know related to connections with Russia until they get caught lying.  Trump seems to have a selective memory too.  It’s a good thing the nuclear codes are written down and carried by a military officer – or is it?

Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the difference between sexual harassment charges against Sen. Al Franken (D-Min.) and Trump is that Franken has admitted his harassment and the president hasn’t.  Yep, we all know that, but it’s a difference with considerable distinction – Franken’s honesty.  Sander’s comment should win a prize of some type.  The White House is all about winning things, even if they are outrageous.

The Washington Post has documented 31 times that members of the Trump campaign met with or corresponded with Russians during the 2016 presidential campaign.  I’m waiting for Press Secretary Sanders to claim they were only seeking a recommendation on where they could buy the best Russian borscht.  These people probably prefer caviar but that would come off as too elitist.

The U.S. Navy recently made BIG news in the skies over Washington State.  One of its pilots used the exhaust from his jet to draw the outline of enormous male genitals.  I’m not sure what he was trying to say with this maneuver but you have to admire his flying skills.

And lastly, I don’t think we are getting the full story on the playground nastiness between Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jung-un.  I’m surprised Trump has been so restrained in responding after Kim called him an old man.  In private I suspect he is saying something like: “Liddle Kim is not only short, fat and ugly, check the hair, but he has little hands — and for him that really means something, heh, heh, heh.”

House Republicans finally released their secret tax plan last week with great fanfare and a flurry of misleading statements about how great it will be for the middleclass.  They call it the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).  This reminded me of a joke by one of my fishing buddies years ago.  He claimed he intended to publish a magazine entitled “Guns and Pickups.”  That title, he said, made it a guaranteed success with most people he knew.

The 429 pages of the TCJA will be voraciously analyzed by numerous tax experts.  To be sure, this is complicated stuff.  But the bill has already been scored by the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), a nonpartisan group of experts whose purpose is to provide assistance on tax legislation for members of both parties in the Senate and the House.  The JCT estimates that this legislation will add $1,487 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years.

Although some Republican Senators are paying lip service to the national debt of $20 trillion and vowing not to “add a penny to the deficits,” I haven’t heard one of them discuss the actual deficit facts – and they are brutal.  The Congressional Budget Office projects that deficits over the next decade will be around $10 trillion under current law, raising the national debt to $30 trillion.  So Republicans want to add almost $1.5 trillion to that?  Really?

The right-leaning Tax Foundation and the left leaning Tax Policy Center will have significantly different estimates of the deficits created by the TCJA.  But I’m inclined to rely on the JCT nonpartisan results.  This is what those numbers and my somewhat crude analysis tell me about the proposed tax cuts for individuals.

Consolidating the tax rates into four levels of 12, 25, 35 and 39.6 percent, establishing a 25 percent rate on so-called “pass though” income from non-corporate business activities, repealing the alternative minimum tax, and repealing the estate tax after 2023 mostly benefit wealthy individuals.  These provisions would reduce federal revenues by $2,404 billion over 10 years.

Doubling the standard deduction and increasing personal and child tax credits mostly benefit middleclass and lower income taxpayers and would reduce federal revenues by $1,553 billion.

To offset part of the lost revenue, Republicans want to repeal the personal exemption of $4,050 per person.  This provides $1,568 billion in added revenues but it eliminates a tax benefit that helps many middleclass and lower income folks with families more than the increased standard deduction.  Plus, the tax credits go away after 2023, causing some lower income folks to pay more in taxes than under current law.

To offset more lost revenue the TCJA repeals most itemized deductions, which recoups $1,253 billion of it.  But some of these deductions benefit upper middleclass and even middleclass taxpayers, particularly those who live in high tax states or those who have large medical expenses.   Sure, the wealthy lose deductions too, but the current law already phases out up to 80 percent of itemized deductions for them.

Republicans keep trying to put some middleclass lipstick on this pig but it’s still — well, pork for the wealthy.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, the seemingly nice guy family man from Wisconsin, claims a middleclass family of four earning $59,000 a year would pay $1,182 less in taxes in 2018 than they would this year.  But since the tax credit benefits in the TCJA phase out by 2024, this family would end up paying more in taxes according to David Kamin, a tax professor at New York University.

The TCJA and the GOP legislation to repeal and replace Obamacare were hatched in the same way.  Congressional Republicans established their nefarious goals and then cobbled together the legislation in secret to achieve them.  Like the Obamacare replacement, they want to pass a bill without Democratic votes so they won’t have to compromise.  Republicans are loath to agree with Democrats on much of anything, particularly taxes and health care.

So while President Trump is sabotaging Obamacare and driving up the cost of premiums, several conservative, billionaire-funded organizations are spending millions on TV ads to sell his budget busting tax plan to middleclass Americans.  According to the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank some of these ads claim that the average family will receive a benefit of more than $1,200 per year.  Hell, that’s not even enough to cover the rising premiums for one month on their health care plan.

Republicans are REALLY DESPERATE to pass a tax cut for their wealthy backers.  Imagine a Republican congressperson’s mother standing in the way of getting this legislation done. She would be mowed down like a stalk of wheat in front of a fast-moving combine.

Polls show that the majority of Americans oppose the House tax plan and six out of ten think it favors the rich.  Senate Republicans aren’t enthusiastic about it either and plan to draft their own proposal.  Isn’t that the way the Obamacare replacement started?

And looming in the legislative headlights is the December 8 deadline for funding the government and increasing the debt limit.   Will the three stooges of government — Trump and the House and Senate Republican’s — get their act together to accomplish this and tax cuts too?  Who knows?  Their slapstick comedy show would be funny if the issues weren’t so serious.

Ominous signals were emanating from the Republican leadership in Washington last week as they pushed to curtail the House and Senate investigations into Russian meddling in last year’s presidential election.  Although the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation appeared to start on a bipartisan footing, it may now end early next year with conflicting Republican majority and Democratic minority reports that leave many questions unanswered.

These congressional investigations differ from those being conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller.  Congress should uncover the full story of Russian cyberattacks and provide a comprehensive report to the public.  Mueller’s inquiry is strictly to determine if crimes were committed.  Consequently, we may not learn much about the Trump campaign’s involvement with Russians from Mueller unless someone in the campaign committed a crime in the process.  The recent indictments of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates do not involve the Trump campaign.

But there is another crucial question to be answered about Russian cyberattacks.  Is the government taking adequate measures to prevent future foreign government interference in our elections?   U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was asked this question during an October 18 hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  He simply answered, “We’re not.”

I believe past presidents and congressional leaders of both parties would have demanded immediate action to protect our election process.  But President Trump and congressional Republicans have political reasons to sweep this issue under the rug — at the expense of national security.  I think this is a shameful violation of their oath to protect and defend the Constitution.

But affronts to the Constitution by Trump and his Republican enablers seem to be the trend.

Trump appointed Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach as co-chair of the President’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.  Kobach is one of the chief architects of state laws to disenfranchise minority voters and purge them from voter rolls.  Kobach’s mission is to show that Trump would have won the popular vote last year but for widespread illegal voting but I think he is also gathering information for more voter suppression.

What could be more fundamentally damaging to the Constitution than to discredit the media and threaten freedom of the press?  Republicans have long targeted the media as “liberal” and biased.  But Trump has taken these attacks to much higher level.  He calls unfavorable reports “fake news’ and the media “the enemy of the American people.”  Trump wants stronger libel laws that would make it easier to sue news reporters and he suggested that NBC should lose its license to broadcast because he didn’t like what they were reporting.   NBC is not licensed as such, but the threat is still very alarming.

Sadly, Trump must be achieving some success with these attacks.  According to a recent POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, 76 percent of Republicans and 44 percent of independents believe the media fabricates stories about Trump and his administration.  Does this mean the majority of these individuals will reject clear evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians or that he obstructed justice?   Will public doubt enable a Republican-controlled Congress to reject articles of  impeachment aginst Trump no matter what his crimes?

The Constitution is all about the rule of law.  But Trump attacks judges that displease him and brands Clinton and others as crooks with no evidence that they committed a crime.  What type of jurists will he choose for the hundreds of federal judges he will appoint?  Trump’s former chief advisor Steve Bannon will no doubt help him find judges who are clones of former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore.

Moore recently secured the Alabama Republican nomination to run for the U.S. Senate in an upcoming special election despite the fact that he was twice removed from the Alabama Supreme Court for violating judicial ethics.  Moore has refused to take a stand on whether homosexual Americans should be executed and he has claimed that duly elected Muslims should not be allowed to serve in Congress.

Yet Moore received enthusiastic endorsements from Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who lauded Moore’s integrity and his commitment to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  Retiring Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Az.) may be the only Republican senator who has spoken out against Moore’s opinions saying “that’s not our party, that is not us.”  But Flake will be out of the Senate in 2019 and Moore will likely be in.

Even normally level-headed Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) endorsed Moore saying he will be “a tireless advocate led by principle rather than politics.”  Senators like Cornyn are either putting party before country or they fear attacks from Trump’s rabid supporters like Bannon and Fox News’ Sean Hannity.  Either way endorsements or tacit approval of a radical like Roy Moore should tell us volumes about where the GOP is headed.

I believe Trump, along with his supporters in Congress and the right-wing media, is pushing this country toward a critical crossroads.  Will this nation adopt the bigotry and white nationalism that they are advocating?  Will Trump further subvert the First Amendment and voting rights with the help of Bannon and far-right zealots like Roy Moore?

How many will follow as Trump and the Republican Party recklessly diverges from the path that the Founders established?  For now, voters have a choice.  The direction they take will make all the difference for our democracy.

The real challenge in blogging these days is to provide helpful commentary on what’s going on in Washington.  It’s like someone – I wonder who? – placed all parts of the major issues in a cannon and blasted them into the sky.  Are we moving toward war with North Korea?  Will the insurance markets collapse as President Trump undermines Obamacare?  Will the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) dissolve?  Will the Iran nuclear agreement unravel as Trump tries to weaken it?  The pieces will continue to fall over the coming months and no one can be sure how or where they will land.

One thing is for sure; Trump’s first priority seems to be pleasing his base.  One recent poll found that a majority of Republicans favor a preemptive strike against North Korea.  Don’t they realize there are thousands of artillery pieces and rocket launchers pointing south along the 38th parallel? Massive destructive forces are within easy range of Seoul, South Korea with its population of almost 10 million people.  Even if Kim Jung-un is unable to launch a nuclear tipped rocket the carnage that would follow this U.S. act of war is unthinkable.

No doubt many of Trump’s supporters hate the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), if for no other reason than its name.  But research by the Associated Press shows that 70 percent of those who benefit from insurance discounts on deductibles and co-pays that the federal government subsidizes are in states that helped elect Trump.  Of the top 10 states that benefit the most, nine voted for Trump. No matter, Trump carelessly refuses to fund the subsidies.

These folks will continue to receive this support because insurers are required by law to provide it.  But without the offset of federal payments the companies that don’t exit the markets will be forced to raise premiums for other insureds, potentially making coverage for them too expensive.  Trump has punted this thorny problem to Congress, perhaps to spitefully punish congressional Republicans for failing to repeal and replace Obamacare.  .

NAFTA is considered to be a bad deal by many workers in the rust belt who voted for Trump.  But if you talk with farmers in the heartland where Trump scored big with the voters you might hear a different story.  Farming economies depend on exports and American farmers are among the most efficient in the world.  Reports indicate that many Mexican corn farmers were put out of business by NAFTA.

Plus NAFTA has helped the U.S. manufacturing sector be more competitive with Asian and European competitors.  Actually it is surprising that more free-trade Republicans haven’t pushed back on Trump’s initiatives to renegotiate trade agreements and his rejection of the Trans Pacific Partnership.  Perhaps they prefer to avoid his wrath.

We can’t speculate on how Trump’s action to decertify the Iran nuclear deal will play out.  Like his decision on Obamacare subsidies, Trump has tossed the contentious Iran issue into the hands of the Republican-controlled Congress.  Congress must now decide if sanctions are to be imposed.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was left to clean up some of Trump’s mess.   On CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday he was asked if he agrees with Defense Secretary James Mattis’ who prefers that Congress not immediately impose sanctions on Iran.  Tillerson said “I do agree with that, and I think the president does as well.”  I am no fan of Tillerson, but if he and Mattis resign or are fired the country will be in much deeper trouble.

With less than 28 legislative days left in 2017, however, Congress already has more than it can handle.  I seriously doubt if it will take any action to renew sanctions on Iran.  The big question concerns the payment of Obamacare insurance subsidies.  With so many Republican voters likely to be damaged by Trump’s refusal to pay subsidies, will Congress intervene?  Who knows?

Meanwhile congressional Republicans are desperate to pass some type of tax cut.  They believe their control of Congress depends on it.  Senate Republicans are to vote this week on a budget resolution designed to facilitate passage of tax legislation without Democratic votes.  They have scuttled a rule that would delay voting on a bill until 28 hours after its official budget impact has been completed.  In other words, don’t worry about how the tax bill affects the budget, just get it done.

In order to speed the progress on tax legislation, the deficit-hawkish House Freedom Caucus is no longer demanding the $200 billion in mandatory spending cuts that were included in the House budget resolution. Consequently it seems likely that the final budget resolution to be voted on by both the House and the Senate will simply authorize a tax plan that could add $1.5 trillion to the deficits over the next decade.  Still, there is no assurance that both chambers will get it done.

I don’t believe that there has been a time during my adult life when the country has been so adrift and rudderless.  Trump is not a leader; he is a divider and destroyer — a wrecking ball without morals, conscience or integrity.  I see him as the modern day equivalent of Nero who fiddled while Rome burned — except it is the credibility, the values and the ethics of the United State of America that are being destroyed — while he plays golf.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Ia.) has been in Congress 43 years, 37 of those in the U.S. Senate.  When asked about the Graham-Cassidy bill to repeal and replace Obamacare he said: “You know, I could maybe give you 10 reasons why this bill shouldn’t be considered.  But Republicans campaigned on this so often that you have a responsibility to carry out what you said in the campaign.”  Really?  A campaign promise outweighs people dying for lack of health care?

Republicans obstructed President Obama every way they could, creating crisis after crisis on critical issues like funding the government and raising the debt limit.  They unfairly blamed him for the deficits, which they claimed were the nation’s number one problem.  Members of the House Freedom Caucus and other conservatives even voted for a catastrophic default on the nation’s debt over this issue.

Now the GOP is enthusiastically promoting an irresponsible, budget-busting tax cut for corporations and the wealthy.  But deficits no longer seem to matter to Republicans, including the Freedom Caucus.  They promised tax cuts and now they must deliver regardless of the consequences.

What could be more outrageous than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans crafting major legislation on health care and taxes with limited hearings and little input from experts, Democrats or the public.  GOP policies don’t hold up in the light of day so legislation is fashioned in secret and presented for a vote with limited time for review.  This is a terrible precedent that weakens our traditional democratic processes.

Candidate Trump talked like a populist, the voice of working Americans.  He was going to challenge the establishment and “drain the swamp.”  But he and his billionaire cabinet members operate most comfortably in the swamp.

President Trump is lining his pockets by promoting his properties as THE places to have contact with him and influence the government.  The Trump hotel in Washington, DC has become a magnet for those seeking favors from his administration.

Fabulously wealthy Sec. of Treasury Steve Mnuchin requested government jets for his honeymoon to Europe.  Former Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) — already under a cloud for insider trading in stocks he influenced with legislation – used his position as Health and Human Services secretary to fly on chartered and government jets for both domestic and foreign trips.  The taxpayer’s bill was estimated at around $1 million.

Price has resigned but he’s not the only cabinet official charging the taxpayers for their excessive, luxury accommodations.  Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt reportedly spent $25,000 for a secure, soundproof communications booth in his office.  (This made me think of bumbling detective Maxwell Smart’s “cone of silence” in the TV program “Get Smart.)  Pruitt must be concerned that someone will overhear his conversations with oil industry buddies and discover the terrible things he is trying to do to the environment.  He too flies on chartered or government jets when commercial travel would suffice.

Pruitt also has an unprecedented 18-person, 24/7 security detail at the cost to taxpayers of over $800,000 for just three months.  He must be paranoid – or perhaps he’s afraid of the American public.  When they discover how his decisions are exposing them to increased industrial pollution, they might get really angry.

But there are numerous other reasons for public anger.  Strong evidence shows that Russia conducted a cyber-attack to influence the 2016 presidential election; but Trump and congressional Republicans can’t be bothered with taking defensive actions.  I don’t hear them demanding a strong technical barrier to defend against Russian hacking.  Russia is trying to destroy our free society, our democratic processes and our faith in the government but the Trump administration and Congress do not appear to be doing much to prevent it.

Another outrage was the primary in Alabama to select a candidate to fill Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ seat in the Senate.  Republicans selected Roy Moore, an evangelical, homophobic radical.  Most Senate Republicans just shrugged, but not Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.).  He called it like it should be called: Referring to Moore’s unbelievable insistence that Muslim Americans shouldn’t be allowed to serve in Congress, Flake said, “I think that when we disagree with something so fundamental like that, we ought to stand up and say, that’s not right, that’s not our party, that is not us.”  I’m sorry Jeff, that may not be you — but that is your party.

For years Republicans have demonized the media and the federal government.  As a result, their base and millions of other Americans are losing faith in the basic institutions of our democratic republic.  Many people don’t know who to trust.  No country can progress — let alone prosper — when this happens.  And Trump compounds the problem with his pathological lying.

The examples are too numerous to chronical, but perhaps the biggest outrage is how Trump is dividing our nation — how he is being enabled by many Republicans in Congress — and how millions of Americans don’t seem to care or think it’s ok.

I believe it will take a long time for the nation to recover from McConnell, Trump and the ideologically driven right-wing.  Hopefully a clear majority of voters will put a stop to some of their outrages in the 2018 elections.

Footnote:

Last Sunday our son-in-law Ed and I completed a 2,700-mile drive across most of this great country from the east, through the heartland where I was born and on to the west coast.  I was reminded that very few people live in this vast expanse of land.  We spent hours traveling across flat, endless prairies, passed farmlands with few houses and through fields of corn and wheat that stretched out beyond the horizon on both sides of the road.  We met many great folks along the way but in a small, windy Wyoming town we experienced some particularly friendly, helpful clerks in a combination gas station, general store and pizza parlor.  I kept wondering why these good people would help elect a slick, lying, New York City real estate developer like Donald Trump.  They no doubt knew Trump is a jerk; but perhaps they thought he would be their jerk.  I think they were wrong.

The pressure for tax reform is building.  Conservative organizations are spending millions on TV ads directed at the middleclass who likely won’t get much tax relief from the GOP plan.  President Trump has promoted tax reform at two campaign-style rallies and numerous similar rallies are planned.  CEOs of large corporations are claiming that reducing the 35 percent corporate tax rate is critical for economic growth even though many of them paid single digit federal tax rates last year.

There will be so many proposals flying around that I wanted to provide some information that might help readers understand how tax reform will go down and what it might mean for federal deficits.

First, what is the process to do tax reform?  Republicans want to use budget reconciliation to pass tax legislation without Democratic votes.  This requires that both chambers of the Republican-controlled Congress first approve a concurrent budget resolution for fiscal year 2018 that includes instructions for passing tax reform.  But GOP House members can’t agree on the budget numbers so this critical step has not yet been taken.

What is tax reform?  Well, it is a major overhaul of the existing tax code that includes fundamental changes to rates, deductions and credits for individuals and corporations.  Republicans are also keen to eliminate the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax that apply mainly to the wealthy.

What is revenue-neutral tax reform and why is it necessary?  Revenue-neutral means that the new law collects the same revenue as the existing law.  Under the complex reconciliation rules, legislation that increases the deficits beyond the 10-year budget period must expire in 10 years.  Theoretically revenue-neutral legislation doesn’t increase deficits so it becomes permanent.  That is what GOP leaders want to achieve.

Why is revenue-neutral tax reform so difficult?  Sen. Orin Hatch (R-Utah) explained it with just a few words: “Everything on the (tax) books has a constituency, and that’s one of the problems.”

True, it’s like robbing Peter to pay Paul.  If taxes are lowered for one group of taxpayers they must be raised for some other group to maintain the same revenue stream.  The trick is to increase taxes on those who would be least likely to have powerful supporters.  Typically, Republicans do this by imposing some form of regressive excise taxes on middleclass and lower income folks.

What will tax reform or tax cuts mean for the federal deficits?  In January the Congressional Budget Office published its baseline for federal revenues and spending through 2027.  Under the law existing at the end of 2016 federal deficits were projected to reach $1 trillion in 2023 and keep increasing through 2027.  The aging population is partially to blame.

Even with revenue-neutral tax reform deficits would still be horrific for the last half of the coming decade.  Simply cutting the existing tax rates would exacerbate these deficits significantly unless huge reductions in federal spending are made.

What are some of the tax proposals Republicans have floated?  Speaker Ryan wanted a regressive border adjustment tax on imports that would increase the cost of consumer goods and raise $1 trillion in revenues.   That tax was shot down by conservative donor Koch Industries and retail heavyweights like Walmart.

Trump wants the top corporate rate lowered to 15 percent.  Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the third ranking Senate Republican, estimated that getting the rate down from 35 to 20 percent as House Republicans proposed would cost about $100 billion per point.  In other words, Thune believes reducing the corporate rate to 20 percent would cut revenues by $1.5 trillion over 10 years.  I don’t think Trump’s 15 percent rate is even being considered.

Ryan had another proposal that would allow businesses to rapidly write off the full cost of capital expenditures in the year purchased.  In theory that would encourage businesses to buy lots of equipment.  The cost of these purchases could be deducted from taxable income, which would lower their taxes.  That’s not a bad way to spur the economy and it has worked on a much more limited scale in the current tax code.

But powerful corporate interests like Koch believe this provision would shave $2 trillion from federal coffers over a decade so they oppose it.  They want lower corporate rates that allow them to do what they want with the extra cash.

Ryan is now advocating the elimination the deduction for state and local taxes to offset the cost of lower tax rates.  This would hurt residents of Democratic states like New York and California where taxes are high.  One of the most popular and revenue costly deductions — home mortgage interest — may also be on the chopping block.

It is difficult to determine what the final Republican plan will be or if it will be signed into law this year.  Goldman Sachs recently lowered its expectations of an economically meaningful tax package to 40 percent.

Like the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare, tax reform will probably boil down to Republicans battling Republicans.  This time, however, they will likely get something done – even if it’s far less than their constituents want.

Recently I found an article about states with the highest number of citizens with preexisting conditions.   It was based on statistics from the Kaiser Family Foundation, a well-respected research group.  Since one of the most popular provisions of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) requires insurers to cover those with existing health problems, I wondered which states should get the greatest benefit from this law?

I was not surprised to find that 14 of the 15 states with the highest percentage of preexisting health conditions are controlled by Republicans.  West Virginia has the highest percentage at 36; Kentucky is tied for third highest with Alabama at 33 percent.  All three of these states voted heavily for Donald Trump who campaigned on a promise to repeal Obamacare.

Why wasn’t I surprised?  Well, of the top 10 states that are the most dependent on federal government money nine out of 10 are Republican controlled.   These are the states with the lowest median family incomes, the worst economies and the highest percentage of food stamp beneficiaries. To top it off, a recent 24/7 Wall Street article found that Republicans control 12 of the 15 states with the highest percentage of residents receiving disability assistance.  Kentucky had the fourth highest with over 223,000 residents receiving benefits.

Perhaps that was one reason former Kentucky Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear expanded Medicaid coverage and set up Kynect, the state Obamacare exchange. His efforts helped Kentucky achieve one of the largest drops in the uninsured rate of any state.   This result had to create thousands of health care jobs, bring down health insurance costs for all Kentucky policy holders and provide needed support for cash-strapped hospitals and health care providers.

But Beshear’s accomplishments didn’t matter to the voters.  In 2014 Kentuckians elected Tea Party Republican Matt Bevin as governor.  He vowed to cancel the Medicaid expansion and announced plans to dismantle Kynect.  I find it difficult to understand this type of masochism that causes people to vote for Republican politicians who run on platforms that promise to hurt them.  Whatever the reason, it can’t their economic self-interest.

The GOP began to take control of more state governments after the 2010 election, the same year Republicans won control of the U.S. House.  Although the Great Recession resulted from eight years of President George W. Bush’s administration somehow Republicans must have convinced their supporters that the recession was President Obama’s fault.  But I think the 2010 vote was also in part a reaction to the election of a black man as president in 2008.

Numerous articles have been written about why the GOP has dominated in the more rural areas of the country and why Donald Trump prevailed over Hillary Clinton last November.  Of course, there is no single factor that caused these phenomena.

Certainly, it was easy for Trump to craft messages that appealed to the voters.  He simply promised to do whatever pleased the crowd he was addressing.  While many of his claims were false or virtually impossible to accomplish, they must have been effective.

Still, the 2016 presidential campaign doesn’t explain Republican dominance in the south and west that began well before Trump was even a candidate.  In fact, President Ronald Reagan may have gotten this trend started with his appeal to religious groups.

Later Republicans decided to make abortion their issue and they included God, country and Christian values in their messaging.  They also curried favor with the National Rifle Association by strongly opposing gun control.  These issues are always popular with evangelicals and residents of states with large populations of hunters.

Residents in the more rural areas of the country are sometimes referred to as “fiercely independent,” particularly regarding federal government programs that they fear will control their lives.  Republicans capitalized on these concerns by claiming that Obamacare was a government takeover of the health care system.  They hammered on this theme for seven years.

Democrats tend to focus on diversity and inclusiveness, which they believe are fundamental American values.  This causes some voters to think Democrats favor minorities.  And it is a fact that white people are losing their majority status in the U.S. This statistic is very troubling to many of them.  Republicans policies and rhetoric have tended to favor the white race and their anti-immigration policies speak loudly to the fears of these folks.

Republican politicians paint Democrats as elitist, pro-abortion, pro-LGBT, pro-immigration, pro-minority, pro-gun control and pro big government.  This messaging draws in a wide variety of one-issue voters all over the country.

Republicans always give the major tax breaks to the rich; they oppose unions that bargain for higher wages; they refuse to raise the minimum wage; and they vowed to repeal Obamacare, a law that lowered the number of uninsured nationwide dramatically.  These are core economic issues for the majority of Americans.  Still around 2,600 counties that are mostly in less affluent rural areas voted to elect Trump, while around 500 counties that are mostly in the more prosperous urban areas voted for Clinton.

I wish I could more fully explain why many Republicans vote against their self-interests.  The reasons are complicated and hard for many of us to understand.  But Democrats will have to figure this out if they are to take back control of state governments and regain the majority in Congress.

For the past two weeks my wife and I have been packing up and moving out of our home of 21 years.  There simply wasn’t time to give careful thought to a blog.  More gaps in my blogging will probably occur over the next several months but the issues will always be on my mind. The following thoughts have been on my mind for some time.

Congress is on vacation until September so there are no legislative battles raging on Capitol Hill.  Still President Trump is providing amble subject matter for the media.  I don’t intend to go into all of that and duplicate what others have covered so well.  My purpose today is to voice some concerns about the bad presidents that have been set by Republicans over several decades, particularly the past eight years.

The roots were probably in the presidency of Ronald Reagan.  It was during the 1980s that big government was branded as the problem or even the enemy.  This period spawned the Americans for Tax Reform and its president Grover Norquist.  Libertarian Norquist hated big government so he hatched an ingenious plan to limit the federal bureaucracy.  He convinced Republican politicians to sign a pledge to never raise taxes on anything, ever.  Most Republicans in Congress have signed this pledge.  It effectively prevents compromises on federal budgets.

Grover sought to deprive the government of tax revenue so deficits would get out of control and Congress would be forced to drastically cut spending.  He wanted to “starve the beast.”  The tax cutting and supply-side economics that Norquist and the Reagan administration espoused survive to this day, creating the income inequality that caused many voters to be taken in by Trump’s lies during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Next came Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) who concentrated power as speaker of the House and helped cause the longest partial government shutdown ever during President Bill Clinton’s presidency.  Gingrich mercilessly pursued the Clinton’s during the 1990s and that persecution followed Hillary Clinton through the years and continues to this day.  Trump supporters enthusiastically shout, “Lock her up.”  Third world countries persecute political opponents, not the United States.

But I think no politician has fostered more bad precedents than the current majority leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell.   With ruthless filibusters, he hamstrung the democratic processes from 2007 until he finally became the majority leader in 2015.  Then he continued to block President Obama’s administrative and judicial appointments and legislative agenda until Trump was inaugurated in January.  McConnell’s absolute refusal to even hold hearings on Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court will live in Senate infamy and will come back to haunt.

Now, in part because McConnell’s obstruction was so effective, we have President Donald Trump.  His lies are simply a continuation of the credibility gap between American voters and their government that I believe started under Reagan.

Members of Congress have constantly lied to suit their political purposes.  Many are more concerned about pleasing their wealthy backers than serving their constituents.  A prime example is what Republicans have continuously said about Obamacare since the law was enacted in 2010.  It would destroy jobs; death panels would decide who lives and who dies; it would be a government take over the healthcare system.  The horror stories they told are too numerous to document.  More recently Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Trump and McConnell have been lying about the viability of Obamacare, claiming it is about to collapse.

Well, Obamacare is far from perfect but Republicans have been unable to convert their lies into legislation to repeal or even replace it.  Unemployment has continuously decreased during the past four years, the number of citizens without health care insurance is at record low levels and Obamacare is still providing health care coverage for millions in most markets despite GOP efforts to kill it.

The bad precedents that Republicans have set over the years will not be easily erased.  The veracity of political candidates is ceasing to be an important consideration in their qualifications.  Future representatives and senators will justify their actions based on McConnell’s conduct of Senate business and obstruction and Gingrich’s government shutdown tactics.  The comity that existed in the Senate and the House that has been destroyed by McConnell, the Tea Party, the House Freedom Caucus and other right-wing organizations will be difficult to reestablish.

In my opinion Republicans and their followers have divided the nation with their bad precedents, particularly over the past eight years.  Now Trump has truly become the divider-in-chief with his scurrilous attacks on opponents and support for the alt-right and neo-Nazis.  This troubles me greatly because a divided America is a vulnerable America.  And despots like Russian President Vladimir Putin are eager to take advantage.

Footnote:  Please cut me a little slack over the next several weeks.  Writing on a laptop in a motel room is challenging.