Comment by tomrod

6 months ago

They tried. They had Senate spoilers.

As a progressive, it seems like the Democrats always have Senate spoilers...

  • > As a progressive, it seems like the Democrats always have Senate spoilers...

    With Republicans usually being dominant in a number of states, if Democrats have a Senate majority, it is usually both narrow and dependent on a very small number of Democratic and/or Dem-leading moderate independent Senators from Republican-majority states who vote with the party on leadership, but are soft (or firmly opposed to the progressive preference) on a number of issues important to progressives.

    If the US were approximately an equal democracy, this might be less of an issue.

  • And get blamed for it. If every single Republican and two Democrats vote against something guess who people blame?

  • But this is the type of thing that progressives would like support (tax big corporate America).

    • No, this is a misunderstanding of the kind of taxation policy progressives tend to favor. Taxation on profit for businesses should be high, and taxation on upper tiers of individual income should be high, but taxation on funds businesses use to reinvest should be exempted or deductable. Basically the taxation we had in place after WW2 and on, with a steep corporate tax rate and more or less a maximum income for individuals. The R&D exemption removed in the 2017 bill, and discussed in the article, is key to that, because it encourages corporations to reinvest their income in building new products and paying workers rather than taking it directly as profit-- after all, at least they could reap the rewards (in growth and revenue) of the R&D later, instead of just giving the money to the government as taxes.

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    • This tax is far more consequential for small companies than for large ones. It probably actually benefits larger companies because it hobbles competition.

    • This time bomb was created because the bill slashed the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. Maintaining the status quo would mean taxing big corporate America more than this bill does.

    • But it isn't tax big corporate America. Did you read the article?

      It's a 10% tax cut for big corporate America, with some economic poison for blue states in the future.

  • Both parties tend to when there is a narrow majority, e.g. McCain thumbs downing at the repeal of the ACA.