By Chris Kleponis/Pool/Getty Images.
On Wednesday, Congress overcame a slight technical difficulty to pass its estimated $1.5 trillion tax bill, formerly known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, for a second time. The momentous occasion, which will culminate in a signing by Donald Trump at a time T.B.D., was so exciting that House Speaker Paul Ryan could barely keep it in his pants. Yet despite the fact that Trump stands to financially benefit from the bill beyond his wildest, most self-serving dreams, and that its passage represents his first concrete “achievement” since entering office, the Queens-born billionaire wasn’t in as jolly a mood as one might’ve expected; apparently the lack of media praise for a bill that will hurt large swaths of the American populous was really getting to him.
The amazing thing here is not that the president of the United States is stomping around like a spoiled child who received 39 of the 40 big-ticket items he asked for from Santa. It’s that he can’t fathom a scenario in which his tax bill wouldn’t be universally hailed by the media and the public, outside of a “FAKE NEWS” conspiracy. The president is not alone in this belief; yesterday, Paul Ryan insisted that the bill is only comically unpopular because “people . . . out there on TV [are] telling mistruths, disguising the facts of this thing.” Similarly, former Republican leadership aide John Feehery, told me on Wednesday that “Democrats are losing their minds [on the tax bill] because they hate Trump so much, because they’ve been fed a lot of nonsense by the media.” What sort of outrageous statements by the media have set Trump & Co.’s hair on fire? Perhaps this one from the Associated Press:
Or this one, from The New York Times:
Or this one from CNN:
Or this one from ABC News:
Or this one from The Wall Street Journal, that known purveyor of socialist propaganda:
In other words, the media reports that have so incensed Trump and his buddies are those that tell the truth about what the bill does. (To be fair, even if the press had “celebrated” the bill, it wouldn’t have been enough for Trump, whose desired level of praise would involve a ticker-tape parade down Fifth Avenue, which would then be re-named The Cut, Cut, Cut Act Drive.)
Luckily, his handlers were able to coax him out of his room with the promise of a Cabinet meeting all about how great he is. While it’s difficult to choose a highlight, our top contender is the prayer led by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who thanked God for giving the U.S. such a “courageous” president and for granting us the “opportunity for our economy to expand so that we can fight the corrosive debt that has been destroying our future.” (God apparently understands that it’s O.K. to pass a bill that will add more than $1 trillion to the deficit so long as you immediately turn around and take away “entitlements” like Social Security and Medicare to pay for it). If only that celestial bastard would smite the liberal media, it would truly be a Christmas miracle.
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Speaking of debt . . .
Apparently when Paul Ryan swore that the tax bill would pay for itself, we weren’t supposed to take him literally or seriously:
Ryan on Wednesday said “nobody knows” whether the Republican tax cuts will spur enough growth to pay for themselves “because that’s in the future.”
Ryan’s comment came just hours before House Republicans were scheduled to hold a final vote to pass a bill containing massive, permanent corporate tax cuts, and temporary tax reductions for individuals.
In fact, many experts do know that the tax cuts will not pay for themselves. For instance: the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, which the G.O.P. chose to smear earlier this month when it put out an analysis of the bill that conservative lawmakers didn’t like. Let’s also take a minute to appreciate that self-styled policy expert Paul Ryan is claiming that there is literally no way for, say, economists or tax experts to assess his plan.
About those AT&T raises
On Wednesday, AT&T announced that, thanks to Congress and Trump’s “monumental step to bring taxes paid by U.S. businesses in line with the rest of the industrialized world,” it would be giving $1,000 bonuses to more than 200,000 of its U.S. workers who are union members. And while that’s nice for those employees, as Axios’s Dan Primack points out, this is likely less of a reflection on the tax bill than an attempt to get some good press, and maybe curry favor in light of a certain pending merger:
Meanwhile, economists expect that tax cuts “will juice business capital spending and wages—but just modestly, and those effects will likely be largely offset by higher interest rates triggered by a jump in the deficit.”
Happy New Year!
If you’re partying at Mar-a-Lago, it’ll cost you a little extra, but that’s where those tax cuts come in handy:
Ticket prices for the annual Dec. 31 bash at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in South Florida are going up to $600 for dues-paying members and $750 for their guests, according to members of the private Palm Beach club. Last year’s tickets went for $525 for members and $575 for guests.
Elsewhere!
Over Golf and an Airport Chat, Trump and G.O.P. Hashed Out a Historic Tax Plan (W.S.J.)
Gary Cohn: We “tried 25 times” to cut hedge-fund loophole in tax-reform bill, but failed (CNBC)
Cohn Says He’s Dumbfounded by Tax Plan’s Unpopularity (Bloomberg)
Juices, Bras, and E-Cigs: This Is What Those Companies Were Doing Before They Pivoted to Crypto (Bloomberg)
This dominatrix made men mine $1 million in cryptocurrency for her (MarketWatch)
Crimean couple names newborn son “Bitcoin” (Daily Sabah)
Wall Street bond traders fear zero-bonus “doughnut” (Financial Times)
Uber’s Dismal 2017 Ends in Regulatory Armageddon (The Hive)
Chipotle shares tumble on report of another illness outbreak (Reuters)
Bill Koch’s Son Inadvertently Emerges As The Face Of Trump’s Tax Plan (The Hive)
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