I agree with Pad that the Republicans will have an easier time passing tax 'reform'. They can administratively apply the wrecking ball to the agencies and slash taxes, a hundred bucks more for me, a hundred thousand bucks more for you. They should be able to get tax cuts through both houses.
Ideologically, cutting taxes and borrowing the lost revenue fits establishment Republicans as slime fits a fish. The Democrat's version, of course, is tax and spend. Both parties rely on inflating debt away, to the extent they can. The Republicans preference for tax cuts hasn't changed since the Clinton administration. Clinton wanted to spend budget surpluses on paying down debt, bolstering increasing Medicare costs, and making up for Congress's failure to adhere to the Social Security Trustees' recommendations. The Republicans wanted to use the surplus to cut taxes. When Bush the Younger inherited a 128 billion surplus from the Clinton 2000-2001 tax year budgets, he blew the entire surplus and more on cutting taxes. He had both houses, as Trump does now, and announced a 1.35 Trillion cut in taxes through 2010. We know how well that worked out! History doesn't repeat, but it does rhyme. And it is going to rhyme again soon.
It's the 'Freedom' Honkies*, of course, that won't go for borrowing. They do have their inviolable principles. Borrowing for aircraft carriers, tanks, fighters, and more hydrogen bombs to bolster our stockpile of 6000 nuclear war heads only makes sense in their world of raping Muzzies.** "We'll get a Peace Dividend 'Bigly!,' and Dick Cheney will get a Martin Marietta dividend 'Bigly'. It will be win-win and "Déjà Vu all over again," all at the same time! The prescience of Cheney's lobbying for 50% lower tax rates on dividends during George the Younger's reign will become clear. What a genius the man was!*** Once we've collected on the peace dividend we'll have no further use for the State Department. Mr. Tillerson can sell off the office furnishings on Ebay and add the proceeds to the burgeoning Treasury surplus that will be created by eliminating government.
Fortunately for the Republican establishment, the 'Freedom' Honkies won't know how much has to be borrowed until 2017 revenues roll in --"Oops. Looks like the wealthy didn't create enough jobs; must have spent too much time in St. Moritz."-- The tax cut Bill will have long since been passed on the promise that virtually eliminating the State Department and paring down other government agencies would produce massive savings -- 'Don't you worry Honey, America's going to be 'Great Again,' just like it was when Reagan tore down that Wall."
It remains to be seen whether there are enough establishment Republicans objecting to the Honkies wrecking ball to the point that the vote on the tax cut bill might be, to paraphrase Mr. Trump, 'close.' However, because tax cuts are, next to stamping out government entirely, the Honkies' raison d'être, can any sane person doubt that a massive tax cut bill won't slide through Congress like a Metamucil lubricated turd. The Democrats will be in the bleachers, observing the circus on the field and whining.
The 'Freedom' Honkies want nothing left but dust, rubble and lots of military hardware. Their hope is that it would take decades of Democrat majorities in both houses to rebuild anything more elaborate than a government port-a-potty. (With the ascension of Honky Gorsuch, they will have quite likely secured at least 30 more years of Corporate Rule.)
McConnell and his band of Obama slanderers may look like blithering idiots after they found that some people actually prefer Obamacare to what they had before, even though it is a 'disaster,' but they can still win the next battle. If the 'Freedom' Honkies will permit the bizarre Trump administration to swing that wrecking ball ever so slowly, so slowly that the carnage is not evident until well after November 2018, but the tax cuts are arranged to take hold in Jan 2018, the Honkie era of the American Republic can last past the mid-term elections. This will require the cunning of a Mitch McConnell, Trent Lott, Tip O'Neil, Sam Rayborn, Everitt Dirksen, Robert Byrd, Sam Irwin, and the like. Our Tyro, Paul Ryan, should not listen to the equally inexperienced Mr. Trump, or his alt right, white nationalist courtiers. Instead Ryan should avail himself of the advice of those who know how to slime and be loved for it. If Ryan does this, he and the tax-cutting-at-any-cost Republicans may still be able to welcome 2019 in tall cotton.
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*This word, "Honky", is not chosen with out thought. If you don't know its origin, please look it up.
** The irony here is that although these 'Freedom' Honkies abhor the very idea of socialism, they champion our thoroughly socialist armed services and the VA. One can understand a qualified, well thought out, objection to socialism, but theirs is seldom qualified, nor is there an indication that they have thought through the consequences and inconsistencies of their ideology.
***I have many favorite Dick Cheney quotes, one of which is, I'm sure, the shortest quote on record of any one who ever lived, namely, "So." But my absolute favorite Cheney quote is "We have to make America the best place in the world to do business."
This seemingly captures the essence of the man. And I note, and not without both some displeasure and trepidation, that our good President Trump could have just as easily muttered those same words. Have we elected a proxy for Dick Cheney? God help us, if we have.
