Forbes: GOP Tax Bill Is The End Of All Economic Sanity In Washington

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Forbes ... If it's enacted, the GOP tax cut now working its way through Congress will be the start of a decades-long economic policy disaster unlike any other that has occurred in American history. There's no economic justification whatsoever for a tax cut at this time. U.S. GDP is growing, unemployment is close to 4 percent (below what is commonly considered "full employment"), corporate profits are at record levels and stock markets are soaring. It makes no sense to add any federal government-induced stimulus to all this private sector-caused economic activity, let alone a tax cut as big as this one. This is actually the ideal time for Washington to be doing the opposite. But by damning the economic torpedoes and moving full-speed ahead, House and Senate Republicans and the Trump White House are setting up the U.S. for the modern-day analog of the inflation-producing guns-and-butter economic policy of the Vietnam era. The GOP tax bill will increase the federal deficit by $2 trillion or more over the next decade (the official estimates of $1.5 trillion hide the real amount with a witches brew of gimmicks and outright lies) that, unless all the rules have changed, is virtually certain to result in inflation and much higher interest rates than would otherwise occur. The GOP's insanity is compounded by its moving ahead without having any idea of what this policy will actually do to the economy. The debates in the Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees and on the House floor all took place before the Congressional Budget Office's analysis and, if it really exists, the constantly-promised-but-never-seen report from the Treasury on the economics of this tax bill.

Of course, most of the Republican Congressmen are not actually insane; they know full well who this bill helps -- their donors, who will see fantastic returns on their investment -- and they simply don't care who it hurts. But they know we do care, so they are simply lying through their teeth about what the bill does -- lying so blatant and so destructive to honest debate that I can't think of any real precedent in my 5 decades of watching Congressional maneuvering. It surpasses the previous record so recently set by their lies about Obamacare "repeal and replace," but only by a little.

How can any intellectually honest Republican not be ashamed of these bait-and-switch con jobs?

2018 needs to be the year that this version of the GOP dies an ignoble death, and good riddance.

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2zTFI58