Legislation can be crafted bottom up or top down. In bottom up you ask, What problems do voters have and how can they be addressed. In top down, you ask, What problems do elite politicians have and how can they be addressed?
The House Republican health care bill is a pure top-down document. It was not molded to the actual health care needs of regular voters. It does not have support from actual American voters or much interest in those voters. It was written by elites to serve the needs of elites. Donald Trump vowed to drain the swamp, but this bill is pure swamp.
.. There was no core health care priority that Republicans identified and were trying to solve.
.. There were just some politicians who wanted a press release called Repeal.
.. They could have drafted a bill that addressed the perverse fee-for-service incentives that drive up health costs, or a bill that began to phase out our silly employment-based system, or one that increased health security for the working and middle class.
.. They were more concerned with bending, distorting and folding the bill to meet the Byrd rule, an arbitrary congressional peculiarity of no real purpose to the outside world. They were more concerned with what this internal faction, or that internal faction, might want.
.. It would boost the after-tax income for those making more than $1 million a year by 14 percent
.. this bill the Republican leadership sets an all-time new land speed record for forgetting where you came from.
Think tax reform will be easy for Trump? Ha, ha.
“The rich will pay their fair share,” Trump the populist promised his supporters during the campaign, when he often railed against upper-class greed and special-interest tax breaks.
.. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has repeatedly pledged that the administration would offer life-changing, economy-transforming tax cuts for the working class. Any tax-rate cuts for the wealthy, on the other hand, would be fully canceled out by closing deductions, credits and other loopholes. On net, the wealthy would pay the same amount they are now — hey, maybe more!
.. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) dubbed it the “Mnuchin rule.”
.. Trump’s plan would give rich people the biggest tax cuts of any income group.
That’s true however you slice it. The top 1 percent of taxpayers get the biggest cut in raw dollar terms, as a percentage of their incomes and as a percentage of total tax cuts. They’d receive nearly half the total tax cuts under Trump’s plan (and three-quarters of all the cuts under the House GOP plan).
.. owners of pass-through businesses (which include sole proprietorships, partnerships and S-corporations) to be taxed at a flat rate of 15 percent rather than the regular individual income-tax rates.
.. Just as all of Trump’s health-care promises proved impossible to square, so too will his tax populism collide with the plutocratic reality of his true priorities.
Donald, This I Will Tell You
And you, Donald, are getting a reputation as a sucker. And worse, a sucker who is a tool of the D.C. establishment.
Your whole campaign was mocking your rivals and the D.C. elite, jawing about how Americans had turned into losers, with our bad deals and open borders and the Obamacare “disaster.”
.. You knew the Republicans were full of hot air. They haven’t had to pass anything in a long time, and they have no aptitude for governing. To paraphrase an old Barney Frank line, asking the Republicans to govern is like asking Frank to judge the Miss America contest — “If your heart’s not in it, you don’t do a very good job.”
.. Instead, you sold the D.O.A. bill the Irish undertaker gave you as though it were a luxury condo, ignoring the fact that it was a cruel flimflam, a huge tax cut for the rich disguised as a health care bill. You were so concerned with the “win” that you forgot your “forgotten” Americans, the older, poorer people in rural areas who would be hurt by the bill.
.. You were humiliated right out of the chute by the establishment guys who hooked you into their agenda — a massive transfer of wealth to rich people — and drew you away from your own.
You sold yourself as the businessman who could shake things up and make Washington work again. Instead, you got worked over by the Republican leadership and the business community, who set you up to do their bidding.
.. That’s why they’re putting up with all your craziness about Russia and wiretapping and unending lies and rattling our allies.
They’re counting on you being a delusional dupe who didn’t even know what was in the bill because you’re sitting around in a bathrobe getting your information from wackadoodles on Fox News and then, as The Post reported, peppering aides with the query, “Is this really a good bill?”
You got played.
REPORT: Pence Pushed to Label Paul Ryan’s Failed Health Bill ‘Ryancare’ Not ‘Trumpcare’
a report has surfaced that in the final days before passage of the bill, Pence pushed to label the bill “Ryancare.”
“The President and I are grateful for Speaker Paul Ryan and all the House Republicans who stood with us in this effort to begin the end of Obamacare,” said the Vice President, who lamented, “As we all learned yesterday, Congress just wasn’t ready.”
.. Pence vowed that they will cut corporate taxes. He said they would cut business taxes “to 15 percent so American companies will invest in American operations that create American jobs.”