US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7363

If you filed for an extension on your taxes this week, you're right in step with the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress. They've put off voting on their promised tax overhaul until after they take another whack at repealing and replacing Obamacare.

That's got some Republicans concerned, including Stephen Moore, who was an economic adviser to the Trump campaign.

"You, know, you've got a period when you're first elected when you've got to rush to get things done," says Moore, "before that window slams shut."

But here we are in mid-April, Moore says, President Trump has no legislative victories, and his Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin says a tax cut will have to wait until the fall.

Moore believes Trump needs a win and should push a tax right now.

"Do something that's achievable," he says, pointing out that Trump ran on a corporate and business tax cut. "Get that done. This is taking too long and it gets harder to do as each week goes by."

Moore does have some skin in this game: He's co-author of the tax overhaul plan Donald Trump ran on during the election. But nearly 100 days into his administration, Trump hasn't sent Congress that or any other tax plan.

Moore thinks the lack of a tax bill already is having negative effects: Growth seems to be slowing, and the latest monthly jobs numbers for March were disappointing. When he talks to investors and businesses and asks why things seem to be slowing, they say they're getting nervous that Trump's tax cut may not happen.

Jon Traub, a former Republican staff director at the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, says the outlines of a Trump tax bill are still unclear. "We're still waiting to figure out what President Trump is going to embrace," says Traub, who's now at the consulting firm Deloitte.

The biggest question, he says, is whether Trump will get behind the controversial border adjustment tax. It's a key element of a dramatic plan supported by House Republican leaders to overhaul the tax code. The proposal, a 20 percent tax on all imports, is attractive because it would raise a huge amount of revenue. The plan simultaneously eliminates taxes on American exports.

The proposal has divided the U.S. business community. Not surprisingly, retailers like Walmart that import products they sell, hate it. On the other hand, exporters like Boeing love it.

"The president has given mixed signals on that issue," says Traub. "I think it's fair to say that without his active support, that proposal can probably not pass the House or the Senate."

If Trump doesn't support the border adjustment tax, he would need to find some other way to raise the hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue needed to cut tax rates without adding to federal budget deficits. The White House has floated several ideas for getting that revenue, including a carbon tax and a value-added tax (VAT); neither previously has had much Republican support.

On April 20 2017 22:24 opisska wrote:
I know it's a rather minor topic amidst the current slew of events, but I find O'Reilly's story quite interesting. He is obviously a very intelligent person, eloquent and highly skilled - and even though he was mainly representing "the other camp" from my point of view, he was capable of some reflection and wasn't buying all of Trump's bullshit. Yet, he goes down in the most stereotypical way possible. Just what you would expect from a rich white republican in position of power, isn't it? As far as I understand, he was never really convinced of anything (it's all settlements) so it's a little tricky to say what he "did", but five sexual harassment lawsuits, really? Is it some inane part of the conservative view of the world, to be a sexist pig? Because it seems like there is a kind of a pattern emerging ...

On April 20 2017 22:27 Acrofales wrote:

It's not just conservatives. It's rich white men.

Actually, let me clarify. Rich white men is too unnuanced. It's men in positions of power. They just happen to be rich white men more often than not.

On April 20 2017 22:49 Biff The Understudy wrote:

The problematic thing when they happen to be republican is that they more often than not have spent their life self righteously preaching "family values" and sexual moral. Just like priests abusing children while the catholic church pretends to incarnate some higher sexual moral and judges people all the time based on their sexuality, it's the hypocrisie that is the most disgusting.

I'm glad to see him go.

On April 20 2017 22:24 opisska wrote:
I know it's a rather minor topic amidst the current slew of events, but I find O'Reilly's story quite interesting. He is obviously a very intelligent person, eloquent and highly skilled - and even though he was mainly representing "the other camp" from my point of view, he was capable of some reflection and wasn't buying all of Trump's bullshit. Yet, he goes down in the most stereotypical way possible. Just what you would expect from a rich white republican in position of power, isn't it? As far as I understand, he was never really convinced of anything (it's all settlements) so it's a little tricky to say what he "did", but five sexual harassment lawsuits, really? Is it some inane part of the conservative view of the world, to be a sexist pig? Because it seems like there is a kind of a pattern emerging ...

edit: speaking of Colbert respecting him, his final address wasn't very ...respectful But their in-person interactions were always great.

South Korea’s government wants to know whether Chinese President Xi Jinping gave alternative facts on the nation’s history to Donald Trump.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last week, Trump said Xi told him during a recent summit that “Korea actually used to be a part of China.” The comments sparked outrage in Seoul and became an issue in South Korea’s presidential race, prompting the foreign ministry to seek to verify what Xi actually said.

“It’s a clear fact acknowledged by the international community that, for thousands of years in history, Korea has never been part of China,” foreign ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck said at a briefing in Seoul on Thursday.

Trump has sought to get China -- North Korea’s main ally and benefactor -- to do more to persuade dictator Kim Jong Un to stop conducting nuclear and missile tests. Xi’s explanation of the historical relationship made Trump realize that it’s “not so easy” for China to influence North Korea to give up its nuclear program, the newspaper quoted the U.S. president as saying.

Candidates for South Korea’s May 9 presidential election weighed in on the issue, which comes as the nation’s relations with China are already strained over moves to deploy a U.S. missile defense system on its soil.

“This is clearly a distortion of history and an invasion of the Republic of Korea’s sovereignty," conservative Liberty Korea Party candidate Hong Joon-pyo said through a spokesman.

A representative for Democratic Party of Korea candidate Moon Jae-in demanded to find out the full context of Xi’s comment. Ahn Cheol-soo’s People’s Party said that, if true, it would be regrettable for China to distort history in an international diplomacy setting.

Chinese dynasties invaded the Korean Peninsula repeatedly over the centuries and demanded tributes, but South Koreans reject the idea that their ancestors were ever ruled by their neighbor.

On April 20 2017 23:33 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
I'll be surprised if the US isn't globally isolated because of this dipshit in 4 years.



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On April 20 2017 17:28 Biff The Understudy wrote:

I never worked in the army and I'm a frenchman about to make a very french comment but I never quite understood why it's so terrible if two people have sex on a nuclear submarine, or actually anywhere else.

On April 20 2017 23:57 Acrofales wrote:
It's not even really an alternative fact. Whether Korea was a direct part of China under the Yuan dynasty or an independent client state is a historical quibble. But it seems tailor-made to piss the Koreans off to accept the former as truth. This is about at the same level of diplomatic idiocy as calling the Nazi death camps "Polish death camps". In the grand scheme of things, nobody should give a shit what you call it, but your own allies are (irrationally) sensitive about it, so just don't say stupid shit like that.

On April 20 2017 23:33 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
I'll be surprised if the US isn't globally isolated because of this dipshit in 4 years.



Source