Republicans ready to defeat tax bill to help Trump

February 1, 2024

A tax bill with bipartisan support passed in the House on a 357 to 70 to vote. The bill, if approved by the Senate, would be a significant achievement because it expands the amount of the child tax credit available to lower-income families—a key Biden objective. In exchange, the bill would maintain business tax deductions scheduled to expire. The details are here: WaPo, House votes to expand child tax credit, beef up corporate tax breaks. (Accessible to all.)

The fact that the bill made it through the fractious House should be a good sign of likely passage in the Senate. Sadly, it is not. Why? Because Senate Republicans don’t want to give President Biden a “win” in an election year. Sound familiar? See USA Today, GOP senator doesn’t want to pass a tax bill because it could make Biden ‘look good’.

Per USA Today, Senator Grassley said,

Passing a tax bill that makes the president look good — mailing out checks before the election — means he could be re-elected, and then we won’t extend the 2017 tax cuts.

Not to be outdone, Senator Mitt Romney said he would oppose the bill because it would turn into “another entitlement program which is massively expensive.”

Grassley’s comment is telling on many levels. First, it contains the naked admission that Republicans are no longer working to serve the American people but are, instead, concerned only with serving their overlord, Donald Trump.

Moreover, Grassley is wrong in asserting that the bill will “send checks” to Americans in an election year. The child tax credit is just that—a tax credit offsets taxes owed. If a taxpayer owes no tax, then the tax credit can generate a refund (up to $1,600).

Worse, Grassley opposes the bill in the hope that Trump will be able to extend his 2017 tax cuts for millionaires—which added $3.5 trillion to the deficit (through 2033). Extending those tax cuts would increase the deficit even more.

To increase the likelihood of granting windfall tax cuts to the nation’s top income earners in another Trump administration, Senators Grassley and Romney want to deprive tax benefits to the working poor—benefits that Romney derisively calls “entitlements.”

Romney, a former hedge fund manager, has no problem with the “carried interest deduction” for hedge fund managers, which generates billions in tax deductions for the nation’s wealthiest billionaires. In Romney’s view, the carried interest deduction isn’t an “entitlement” because billionaires and millionaires should get to keep their money free of taxes because they are “special.”

We once again stand at the precipice of legislative action that will benefit the American people—but Republicans oppose it because doing so is contrary to Donald Trump's partisan interests. Don’t believe me? Just ask Senator Chuck Grassley.

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Update on effort to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas.

A House committee voted to advance the impeachment resolution against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the House floor for a vote. As of Tuesday evening, it seems likely that the resolution will pass, but with a three-vote margin in the House, the outcome is not certain.

A NYTimes analysis piece explains the obvious—that Mayorkas has not committed constitutional “high crimes and misdemeanors.” See NYTimes, Karoun Demirjian, Impeachment Case Against Mayorkas Ignores Government’s Immigration Powers.

As Demirjian explains, the number of migrants detained at the border far exceeds the available facilities to house detainees. So, the federal government must exercise discretion in deciding which migrants to continue to hold in detention. The unsurprising answer is that the federal government prioritizes the detention of detainees who pose a national security threat or have criminal histories.

It is that exercise of discretion that the House believes is an impeachable offense. Demirjian writes,

What the charges do not take into account, however, is that Mr. Mayorkas also has the legal authority to determine which migrants to prioritize for detention, given limited bed space and long backlogs in the immigration courts.

The Senate will not convict or remove Secretary Mayorkas. The impeachment is a performance worthy of the theater of the absurd and Mao’s “reeducation camps” in the Cultural Revolution. And it is a complete waste of time by a Congress whose major accomplishment this year is extending the deadline for passage of a 2024 budget that should have been approved no later than June 30, 2023.

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Biden flips the script in polling, shows gains among women and independents

I frequently advise readers to ignore polls. I am continuing that advice in this newsletter. But I want to discuss a trend that should give you the confidence to rebut reluctant or oppositional voters who repeat the false narrative that Joe Biden will lose to Donald Trump.

There are dozens of polling organizations whose job it is to produce polls. The more polls they conduct, the more they get paid. And most of the polling organizations are conservative fronts designed to “flood the zone” with low quality polls to create a false narrative. The media has gleefully latched onto the “Trump is leading” narrative because doom and gloom sells soap. (Don’t ask me why!)

But in several high-quality polls taken over the last week, that narrative has been turned on its head. I am not going to cite specific polls; I just want you to know that the notion that Trump is leading in the polls is provably false. The race is competitive, and Biden is more than holding his own. (If you want to follow the polls with someone who has the expertise to deconstruct flawed polls, see Simon Rosenberg’s Hopium Chronicles.)

The trends are encouraging because they show Biden is gaining strength in the cohorts that a rational observer would predict—among women and independents. If Biden can maintain or improve his 2020 performance among those groups, he will be unbeatable.

The only poll that matters is the one conducted on election day. So, while we have every reason to be hopeful, we have no reason to be complacent.

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MAGA world declares a “holy war” on Taylor Swift.

At the very moment that Biden is showing increasing strength among women, Trump has declared war on a strong woman who is wildly popular with young, female voters. One observer illustrated the situation in an imaginary dialog as follows:

Political Consultant: We have a huge problem with women.

GOP: What if we declared war on Taylor Swift?

Although the above was meant as satire, reality is even worse. The GOP is not only declaring a “war” on Taylor Swift, they are declaring a “holy war” on the superstar. See Rolling Stone, Trump Allies Pledge 'Holy War' Against Taylor Swift.

We may have seen the first salvo of that “holy war” on Fox News on Monday, where host Jesse Watters interviewed Ben Bankas, a comedian, about Taylor Swift. Bankas made a comment body-shaming the fake, AI-generated pornographic images of Taylor Swift that are circulating on social media. See Meidas Touch Network, Fox Body Shames Fake AI Taylor Swift Nudes.

The exchange between Watters and Bankas was wrong on so many levels it is difficult to know where to begin. But the one thing that is certain is that body-shaming fake nude photos of Taylor Swift will not endear Swift’s followers to the propaganda that Fox News is promoting.

While much of the animus directed at Swift is based on the fear that she will motivate young women to register and vote, another reason is Trump's fragile ego. According to the Rolling Stone article,

Trump has also privately claimed that he is “more popular” than Swift and that he has more committed fans than she does.

The one thing Trump cannot abide is other people getting more attention than him. Some things never change.

I realize I have digressed, but let me bring this back to Biden’s reelection bid: Joe Biden is gaining in favorability among women voters while Fox News and Trump are picking a fight with a strong superstar adored by hundreds of millions of Americans. That is bad for Republicans and good for those who seek to preserve democracy. See David Corn in Rolling Stone, Why the Right-Wing Conspiracy Theory About Taylor Swift Is Good for American Democracy.

David Corn writes,

Yet here comes Swift to save the day. With the attacks on her, MAGAites are displaying their true colors and their extremism. Their efforts to denigrate her and Kelce—and their calls to football fans to root for the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl—evince a smallness of spirit and a censorious instinct. . . .

Moreover, they are showing Swifties and the rest of us how central conspiracism is to their worldview and how bonkers they are. Claiming Obama was born in Kenya was one thing; alleging that Swift is a puppet of the Deep State being manipulated by its denizens—that’s quite another.

This conspiracy theory is an insult to Swift and her fans, and perhaps for some it will be an eye-opener to the craziness and meanness that dominates the Trump and MAGA cosmos. Biden and Democrats ought to hope that these voters don’t shake it off. And if they don’t, that would, as Swift might say, be karma.

While we can’t count on Republicans to defeat themselves, we should recognize that they are frequently their own worst enemies. Remember that next time someone tries to beat you up with Biden’s supposed unfavorability ratings.

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Opportunity for reader engagement.

I received this note from Vote From Abroad regarding the need for eligible voters living abroad to request their ballots.

Citizens living abroad! Make sure you are ready to vote this year!

The 6.5 million voting-age US citizens living or studying abroad can vote—but they must request their overseas ballots every calendar year. 

It’s February already, so let’s do it! Visit votefromabroad.org and fill out the forms to receive overseas ballots. Vote From Abroad also offers one-on-one live help via Zoom if needed.

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Concluding thoughts.

Several important judicial decisions are overdue. Commentators are increasingly criticizing courts and judges for failing to act with the urgency demanded of a moment when democracy hangs in the balance. Those criticisms are well founded. See Politico, Trump’s election-subversion trial will likely be delayed for months.

In general, state and federal courts have treated Trump as any other litigant or defendant. He is not. He has declared his intention to undermine the Constitution, to execute or jail political opponents, and to convert the DOJ into a political “hit squad.” He attempted a coup and incited an insurrection. Trump is entitled to due process; he is not entitled to convert the usual glacial pace of the judiciary into a “get out of jail” free card to allow him time to be reelected.

Federal courts are capable of acting with lightning speed when necessary. The failure to do so in the case of Donald Trump is a choice. Sadly, it appears to be a partisan choice of judges appointed by or sympathetic to Trump. The fact that their colleagues remain silent in the face of intentional “slow walking” by Trump's judicial fan club is not acceptable.

Two months ago, I published a newsletter entitled “The Courts are Not Coming to Save Us.” That remains true today. There will be no justice for Donald Trump unless we defeat him in November. But when we do, judicial reform—starting at the Supreme Court—must be a priority.

When we retake the House and expand our majority in the Senate, there must be impeachment hearings for judges who flout the law and ignore the Constitution. Federal judges must understand that their constitutional independence is limited by the requirement of “good behavior”—a phrase that surely includes following the Constitution and recusing oneself from matters in which the judge’s impartiality can reasonably be questioned.

The “Trump” judges have run riot because they believe they can. It is time to show them otherwise. That starts with defeating Trump.

Talk to you tomorrow!