Author Archives: GiaMcAuley

Ivanka Trump Meets With Congress to Pretend That Her Father Cares About Children

by GiaMcAuley Posted on February 23, 2017

Mother Jones

Bloomberg reports on Ivanka Trump’s first foray into policymaking:

Members of the House and Senate met with the president’s eldest daughter in the Roosevelt Room at the White House last week to discuss her proposed child care tax benefit, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting….It’s not clear whether Ivanka Trump is finding much appetite on Capitol Hill for her proposal. A deduction for child care expenses is both costly and regressive because it would favor wealthier families with two working parents. The deduction would cost the federal government $500 billion in revenue over a decade, according to an estimate by the Tax Foundation, a politically conservative, nonprofit research group.

Let’s see. It would cost $500 billion and fund a touchy-feely welfare program. On the bright side, it would benefit wealthy families more than the poor. Decisions, decisions….

As for the regressiveness, here’s a quick stylized example for a plan that allows, say, a deduction of up to $5,000 for child care expenses:

Income of $500,000, tax bracket = 39.6 percent, total value of deduction = $1,980
Income of $70,000, tax bracket = 15 percent, total value of deduction = $750
Income of $25,000, tax bracket doesn’t matter because you’re not paying any income taxes, total value of deduction = $0.

Everybody in the world with even a passing knowledge of tax policy is well aware of all this. Tax deductions are next to useless for the working and middle classes. That’s why anyone who actually wants to help the non-rich proposes tax credits with a fairly low income cap.

In other words, this is typical Trump. Launch Ivanka onto Capitol Hill with a high-profile proposal and get plenty of good PR for it. But the proposal itself does little for the working class, and Congress won’t pass it anyway. I think I should start keeping a list of Trump proposals that fit this model.

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Ivanka Trump Meets With Congress to Pretend That Her Father Cares About Children

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John Boehner Faces a Revolt of the Moderates

by GiaMcAuley Posted on January 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Having awakened from my slumber, I see that John Boehner has a whole new problem on his hands. Apparently the rump moderate wing of the the Republican Party is starting to feel itchy:

Female lawmakers pushed the party to drop Thursday’s planned vote on legislation that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, forcing leaders to abruptly switch course and pass a different antiabortion bill.

Last week, a surprisingly large group of 26 House Republicans refused to support an amendment that called for ending deportation deferrals of young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children. Those dissenters came within one vote of tanking the measure aimed at so-called Dreamers.

This comes from LA Times reporter Lisa Mascaro, who tells us these folks “bristle” at being called moderates. The prefer to be called pragmatists. Tomayto, tomahto, says me, though it’s telling that “moderate” is still a dirty word in GOP land. It’s also telling that all this fuss is over bills that everyone agrees are nothing more than the usual symbolic flotsam and jetsam that Republicans pass every year with no actual hope of any of them becoming law. This year, though, they’re having trouble even doing that.

Why? Is it because the bills are slightly less symbolic than in the past? There is, after all, just a bare chance that some of them could get through the Senate if sponsors line up a few Democrats to join in. They’d still get vetoed, but they’d nonetheless be a little less symbolic in the public’s mind. Or is it simply the fact that as Republican ranks grow, the party’s victories increasingly come in more moderate districts? As Democrats lose ground in moderate districts and become more solidly liberal, perhaps it’s inevitable that Republicans will become more like the Democrats of old.

In any case, John Boehner has his work cut out for him. He’s got tea partiers on one side, moderates on the other, and a president who has been very effectively throwing sand in the gears of Republican priorities ever since November. Boehner’s leadership skills, always a bit on the iffy side, are going to be sorely tested this year.

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John Boehner Faces a Revolt of the Moderates

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