by Max Humana

December 20, 2017

Congress’s frenzied attempts this week to rush a historically bad tax code change through at light speed are a travesty and a collective rejection of the oath each member swore upon assuming office. In their haste to ram this tax change through, Congress is rushing like a mob of crazed lemmings straight toward a fiscal cliff. That they are doing this quite deliberately and on purpose, and to the detriment of the Nation, blends insane mobthink with something quite worse.

The Congressional oath which each member of Congress takes is broad but clear. It reads “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

The very first words of that Constitution which each member of Congress swore to support and defend are equally broad but clear. “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Each member of Congress, as our elected representative body and also as our employees, thus swore to uphold the Constitution and it is their job to implement it on our behalf. This ramshackle tax jalopy may not be legally unconstitutional, but it is definitely anti-constitutional in practice and is bad for America.

The tax code quite literally affects every human being in America and either directly or indirectly impacts every single aspect of our lives. It is a behemoth that does have to be cut down to size. But it is that size and its all-encompassing reach, plus all of the second and third order effects that will result from the lack of detailed analysis done on this massive plan, which all together prove that a very comprehensive, intelligent and bipartisan analysis should be done before any major changes are made. Actions taken in haste and without analysis often do the most harm, and this action is being taken in extreme haste and with very little analysis except for what it will do for a very few special interest and well monied individuals and corporations. Only a few weeks ago, we were shown a postcard and told this was the tax return of the future, but rather astoundingly there had been no real analysis and there was no real proposal ready. Now we see the two chambers of Congress vacillating wildly on their proposals literally from hour to hour, without the public having any real idea what is going on and with few to little avenues by which to inject our perspectives.

What is really happening, as has been widely shown in the media, is that these bills are being written behind closed doors under the protective shadow of lobbyist pens. I have been in contact with my local congressional offices and they seem to have the same miniscule level of information on the details of the bill as does the general public.

This is a travesty. Everyone can agree that the current code is in great need of revision, and there is more than sufficient bipartisan agreement on this both on Main Street, where it really matters, and in Congress, who is supposed to be working for those Main Streeters and who is supposed to be lobbying on their behalf, not being lobbied by monied interests. This is not happening. These proposals are massive and changes must be done carefully and with full transparency.

How bad is it? I told a local US congressional office about my concern with the speed and carelessness with which this tax “plan” is being rushed through, and the response (paraphrased here) was quite clear.  ‘This was all fine, because the Democrats had ‘rammed Obamacare through’ and now the Republicans were in power and it was their turn to ram something through.’  I decried this unprofessional response by asking if two wrongs made a right, and the person quickly backed off. This person also said, unbelievably, that the faster the bill got out the better it would be because there would be ‘less revisions needed later on’. I called bullshit on this obvious stupidity as well.

America goes to war about every ten years. We suffer natural disasters like hurricanes much more frequently. When I asked that Congressional representative how we would pay for what will be the inevitable next extremely expensive war and the next set of devastating hurricanes, wherever and whenever they occur in the next ten years, the response was actually frightening. This person said (I’m copying and pasting verbatim here from an email this person sent to me) “…the U.S. could increase its debt (which both Republicans and Democrats have been doing for years, despite pledges not to do so.) Should the unthinkable happen (i.e. an attack from North Korea) I have no doubt we would do the same with Republicans and Democrats coming together for the national good.”

Yes, you read it correctly.  The Republicans’ plan for the future, their deliberate decision on how to budget for known expenditures, is to cut taxes on the wealthy and on corporations and to pull out the already melting national credit card.  This is so pathetic  and hypocritical, particularly coming from the party which up until the last couple of weeks trumpeted itself as the party of fiscal responsibility, that it’s impossible to believe they have any serious intention of governing beyond using it to fill their wallets.

I have many more examples of conversations with this Congressional representative and others which are stratospherically high on dogma and utterly devoid of reality and analysis.

So Republicans are choosing not to do the responsible thing and actually set aside money for these inevitabilities, or to stop deliberately adding a trillion and a half dollars to the national deficit, the Republican plan is to deliberately fail to do proper and responsible budget planning, and to just raise the debt limit. This is the Republican ethos of the 21st century on full frontal display, and is being crowed about in its own words from its own mouths. Main Streeters have to plan for emergencies and contingencies, but Republicans employ an unholy mix of disproven dogma with modern-day bread and circuses to avoid proper and responsible planning. They are working hard to mortgage our children’s future with a bribe of a few dollars today in exchange for uncontrollable debts as an inheritance to our posterity.

This is the bottom line once and for all on the ‘trickle down’ idea. It is a failed dogma. It is a dogma which has been tried repeatedly but has always failed in practice. Why? Because this dogma depends on businesses operating based on some sort of principle of altruism, which is not how they operate. The mission of a for-profit business is to expand the bottom line, not to give its profits to its employees. If that were true, the lower-paid employees of major corporations would be getting paid much more than they are now, there would not be an income inequality issue, and corporations would not be currently sitting on almost two and a half trillion (yes, Trillion with a “T”) dollars in cash. When Congress can show clear historical and current evidence of overwhelming evidence that this dogma actually works in the real world, we can consider it as an option. Until that time, it needs to stay in its snake oil jar.

And why the mad rush to lower the corporate tax rate when their effective tax rates, meaning the taxes corporations actually currently pay, are already far below the statutory 35% rate? Data from 2016 show that Apple’s effective tax rate was less than 26%, while Microsoft’s was a bit over 16%. Corporations are very good at reducing their tax bills, regardless of the statutory rate. Thus the actual tax they pay is far lower than the statutory rate. This issue was another on which the Congressional rep very irritatingly tried to obfuscate with smoke and mirrors. What corporations will actually do under this proposed bill is find ways to go even lower on their effective rates, meaning the actual tax bills they pay will continue to be lower than whatever the statutory rate may be.

Americans want Republicans in Congress to work for us, not against us. Main Streeters don’t have room for dogma or ideology in our fiscal and tax planning. Unlike Wall Streeters, we won’t get bailed out if we recklessly blow our money. We have to use facts and reality. We perform empirical analysis using actual facts. Many of us are fiscally conservative and responsible with our resources. There has not been a massive shift in the code for many years, so many millions of Americans did the smart thing – we read the code, we analyzed our financial situation in light of the code, and we planned and executed our financial actions accordingly. Taking the entire tax code and turning it upside down on a moment’s notice like this is unprofessional and a slap in the face to all these citizens who have been thoughtful and responsible but who won’t have time to analyze the new code and remake their personal financial plans accordingly before it blows up their finances. This is like telling Social Security recipients that, oh, so sorry but your checks will be going down by 25% in two months. It is unfair and unprofessional and not at all what our Founders had in mind or what indeed any actual responsible person in any profession would do at any time in the history of the planet.

This is what Republicans in Congress must do, immediately.

1. In order to truly and Constitutionally “form a more perfect Union” and “establish Justice”, put the tax bill on hold until a thorough bipartisan analysis and effort creates a nondogmatic, empirically supported bipartisan bill, put that bill out for public review and comment for at least 30 days and adjust accordingly.
2. In order to truly and Constitutionally “provide for the common defence”, budget for the inevitable catastrophic events like war(s), natural disaster(s), market crashes and other unplanned events which will blow astronomically huge holes in the budget and need to be paid for through responsible fiscal planning, not adding to our debt. Borrowing trillions of dollars from global competitors like China is not providing for our common defense, it is damaging to it.
3. In order to truly and Constitutionally “promote the general Welfare”, design the tax code to do just that. Ensure we have robust and safe schools, infrastructure, a strong economy that truly works for all people, and that health care is available and affordable.
4. In order to truly and Constitutionally “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity”, stop spending like drunken sailors and get the budget deficit fixed. Use proven principles, not dogma, to ensure that our children and grandchildren, the only real Posterity we will ever have, will not have the Blessings of trillions of dollars in absolutely unnecessary and preventable debt to have to pay off, nor greatly constrained Liberty due to that crushing debt.
5. In short, do the job we pay you to do or resign and get the hell out of politics.