The Republicans keep telling themselves that current political problems are caused by their failure to keep promises to voters.
I think it's even more basic than that: Their current political problems are caused by the fact that their promises suck, and the American people understand that they suck.
For example, in poll after poll, Democrats now hold a 10- to 15-point advantage in the so-called generic ballot question, which asks voters whether they would vote for a generic Republican or Democrat in next year's mid-terms. As Nate Silver puts it::
How did Republicans get in this situation? It's not their failure to repeal and replace Obamacare. It's the fact that the repeal plan that they finally, belatedly cobbled together would have stripped 20 or 30 million Americans of their insurance, with no feasible path to replace it, and also would have significantly weakened protections for those with pre-existing conditions. That's why, in poll after poll, support for their repeal bill ranged in the 20 percent neighborhood.
The same is true with this abomination of a tax-cut bill. Republicans have told themselves over and over that if they can just pass tax cuts, they'll have something to brag about to voters on the campaign trail next year. They see passage of this bill as their last chance to avoid the kind of wave election that Silver warns about.
Nate, do you have an opinion on this?
Thank you, Nate.
In the most recent Quinnipiac poll, just 25 percent of Americans say they like the Republican tax-cut bill, while 52 percent disapprove. That's a ratio of 2-1 against the bill, which is an enormous differential in polling. In addition, 61 percent of Americans tell Quinnipiac that the prime beneficiaries of the bill will be the wealthy, and they're right.
Again, these numbers recur in poll after poll. In the most recent Fox News poll, 78 percent of Americans say they are frustrated that the wealthy pay too little in taxes. Eighty-five percent say they're frustrated by "corporations using loopholes to avoid taxes." (That same Fox poll also reports that 55 percent of Americans now support Obamacare, while 45 percent still oppose it.)
Given all that, it's madness to believe that passing a very unpopular bill that gives huge tax breaks to corporations and to the wealthy is going to somehow cure what ails the GOP. Yet that's what they believe. That's what they keep telling each other in an effort to screw their courage to the sticking place.
That, and "we better pass this or our rich donors are going to cut us off at the knees."
Their latest idea is something that defies logic. If repealing Obamacare and giving huge tax cuts to the rich and to corporations are hugely unpopular ideas in their own right, what kind of genius does it take to believe that if you combine both ideas in the same bill, THAT will be your ticket to midterm success? On what planet does that make sense?
Well, that's what they're doing. And the problem is that it gets worse. It gets so much worse.
According to analysis by the Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan congressional agency, the House version of the tax bill will cut corporate taxes by $1 trillion over the next decade, in an era when corporate profits after taxes are already at all-time highs. It will save very rich families -- those couples with estates over $11 million -- $200 billion. It will save individuals some $300 billion, with most of that savings going to the top 1 percent.
Oh, and it will also add another $1.5 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.
All of this comes at a time when some 10,000 baby boomers are retiring each and every day. By 2040, according to the Social Security Administration, 78.4 million elderly Americans will be collecting Social Security and relying on Medicare, an increase of more than 50 percent over current numbers. Yet in the face of that daunting demographic and financial challenge, Republicans want to slash government revenue by $1.5 trillion over the next decade. According to models run by the Penn Wharton School of Business, by 2040 the revenue loss caused by this bill will amount to $4.9 trillion, perhaps better put as $4,900,000,000,000.
Something has to give, and if you listen closely, Republicans are telling you what that something is going to be if they remain in power.
Listen to White House economic advisor Gary Cohn, in a recent interview with CNBC:
Q: Are you thinking that you'll deal with that Social Security/Medicare/baby boomer retirement issue later by entitlement reform that reduces benefits?
Cohn: Look, the president on the economic front laid out three core principles. Number one was reg reform, number two was taxes and number three was infrastructure. We're working our way methodically through reg reform, taxes and infrastructure. I think when he gets done with those, I think welfare is going to come up. That's our near-term economic agenda right now.
Did you catch that? Social Security and Medicare are "welfare" in Cohn's eyes.
"Tax reform alone won't get us to a balanced budget. We have to have spending constraints along with that, and as I know, House Republicans, we are turning toward on welfare reform and tackling the entitlements in a way to save them."
Listen to Michael Strain, an economist with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, in an interview with the New York Times:
"(Strain) said that he was concerned about the effect of the tax bill on deficits and that it added to the urgency to scale back programs like Medicare.
“Tax reform is looking like it will make our long-term debt more problematic, and the long-term driver of our debt is increases in entitlement spending,” said Mr. Strain, who argued that it was a better use of resources to cut corporate taxes than to increase funding for entitlements."
The Republican plan is to knowingly blow huge holes in the federal budget, right at the time when baby boomers are retiring in mass, in order to give huge tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy in an era of great economic inequity. Then they fully intend, and are already planning, to use the deficits that they create as an excuse to slash Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Like I said, the Republicans' political problems are not caused by their failure to enact their policies. Their problems are caused by the fact that their policies are so stupid and unpopular in the first place.
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