McCain could save the country from this terrible tax bill

In 2010, he told Fortune magazine that the nation was “sleep-walking toward a debt crisis,” and he foresaw calamity on a grand scale. “Within a few years a sale of government bonds will fail,” he said. “The capital markets will go crazy, and the Fed and Treasury will run to Capitol Hill demanding a giant bailout.” Wow.

He offered much the same view in 2011. “We face a crushing burden of debt, which will take down our economy,” Ryan predicted. “It will lower our living standards.”

.. When it comes to the middle class, by the way, this proposal doesn’t even deserve to be called a tax cut. According to the Tax Policy Center, it would leave about half of taxpayers paying more by 2027.

Republicans are lying coming and going. They hold down the sticker price of the bill and minimize its impact on the deficit by having the middle-class tax cuts (but not the corporate reductions) expire. But they insist that future Congresses would keep the middle-class tax cuts in place.

So they are either lying about the deficit or misleading the middle class.

 .. As soon as Republicans shovel every dollar they can to the people who pay their party’s bills, he’ll dust off those old the-sky-is-falling quotes and warn about the deficits he helped to bloat. He’ll tell us how urgent it is to slash Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and programs for the needy (although he’ll try to bamboozle us again by claiming to be only “reforming” them).
.. What can stop this duplicitous raid on the federal treasury? A mobilization at the grass roots

Trump Sets Nafta Goals: Dilute Pact’s Force, Loosen Regional Bonds

Proposals spark a backlash from Mexico and Canada and from business groups in all three countries

 

U.S. trade officials have made that theme clear in recent days, prompting a backlash from Mexico and Canada and from business groups in all three countries, casting new uncertainty over the talks as they resume in Washington.

One provision designed with that objective is a “sunset” clause that would force Nafta’s expiration in five years unless all three countries act to renew it, said people briefed on the plan.

Other proposals, these people said, would weaken or eliminate the mechanisms aimed at settling disputes between the three countries and curbing the unilateral threats and sanctions that frequently roiled trade ties in earlier years.

.. The administration wants to “change the incentives to disincentives,” and “create more uncertainty and reluctance for U.S. businesses to invest in Mexico,” 

.. Another pending proposal would require for the first time that certain products contain not just a certain level of Nafta-regional content, but U.S.-specific content. That plan, applied to autos and auto parts, would require 50% of Nafta products come specifically from the U.S.

.. Business groups say the U.S. plans—particularly the sunset clause and the one weakening the “investor-state dispute settlement” process—would make it harder for executives to plan the cross-border investment feeding regional supply chains that Nafta has encouraged and that, they say, has raised the efficiency and competitiveness of the North American economy.