Discussion: Cohn 'Can't Guarantee Anything' On Potential Middle Class Tax Hike

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Can’t guarantee anything for the middle class. But I bet he can guarantee that the 1% will make out just fine. Oh, yeah!

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Can’t guarantee?
Wapo fact check, Volume 1…

Long post on this below
-OT

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James Fallows, who’s basically your one-stop shopping option for understanding the world today, has been saying for years it’s a new Gilded Age. Robber barons gonna rob.

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Yup. Even under Obamacare.

But then, with the ACA, it was a deadly sin to be howled endlessly to the heavens, now, it’s “meh”…

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if we taxed lies, we could wipe out the deficit.

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Pro Tip: They’re lying.

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You mean Cohn can guarantee something?
He can guarantee they’re lying, I guess.

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The administration needs to roll Ms. Sanders out for whoppers of this scale… Cohn can hit singles and maybe the occasional double, but he’s in way over his head selling this DOA turd.

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Started in 1983, as I recall.

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HAHAHAHAHA…well OF COURSE NOT. You whine and snivel and slam Democrats for a few people falling through the cracks on their policies, refuse to help fix the legislation and NOW you say 'well we can’t guarantee that you won’t get screwed while we help the 1% with our lame ass policies that haven’t worked the FIRST THREE TIMES we tried them but…be patient.

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“Purely aimed at middle-class families.” Yet he can’t say anything about what it will do for middle-class families. Sounds more like a gun than a tax plan. Actually, a gun held by someone who can’t shoot straight.

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Wow, we’re really going to get screwed by this, huh? I blame every moronic voter who insists on returning brain-dead trickle-downers (Republicans) to elected offices year after year. Blame them!

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Pathetic, just pathetic.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Can you guarantee that President Trump won’t get a tax cut under this plan?
COHN: George, when we’ve looked at the tax plan, and we’ve looked at what it does for Americans, we are very confident that Americans are getting a great deal here. […]
STEPHANOPOULOS: Will the wealthy get a tax cut or not?
COHN: The wealthy are not getting a tax cut under our plan.
STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s not the evidence that’s out there so far.

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I can’t wait for CBO to score this shit once it’s been made more detailed and granular. Here’s how I see it playing out for the GOP and Trump, who clearly think they’re the coolest and have everyone fooled and everything under their control:

Yeah, play with the fire, fucktards.

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Wharever the subject and point of view, “Can you guarantee” questions are almost invariably stupid for any number of obvious reasons, but the sort gotcha journalism that TPM revels in.

Now who could have predicted they’d roll out the tax plan with lies like this? OK, you can all put your hands down now.

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What THEY said…
Conversation between Cramer and Faber Sept 27:
Cramer: If the accountants for the relatively-to-super well-off start calculating, they can figure out that elimimnation of the deduction for state taxes will cause a lot of people to move to Florida. In addition, there are enough congress people of both parties from New York, New Jersey and California to throw a monkey-wrench into things.
Goldman Sachs–some good economists–tried to piece together an analysis. They probably had more information from Congresspeople and lobbyists than the 9-page summary has. Also note that Cohn went to the White House with Goldman’s blessing–practically assigned there. They feel that as is the cuts would reduce tax revenue by 4 trillion over 10 years. Congress(Ryan) has indicated that an acceptable target is zero to down 1.5 trillion, max. So this blows a huge hole in the deficit. Furthermore, Goldman says January or February to enact, election, shme-lection.
Faber: They keep releasing short, vague summaries–a few pages of concepts that can’t pass in the hopes of sneaking the “meaty stuff” through at the last minute when nobody has time to analyze it.

Sound familiar?
There was some talk about how long Reagan took to get through the changes he made, AND he had help from the Democrats. Cramer apparently wrote magazine articles about this years ago. He believes next to none of the sketchy plan will get through at all, especially the pass-through that’s a prime topic of conversation.

No mention anywhere of the middle class. At all. Except, vaguely, by Trump and M’nuthin. No mention of political “turbulence” from (ahem) other matters that will suck the oxygen out of the legislative process.

Odds and ends from other sources:

Update from Thursday morning:Cramer says it isn’t even a windfall for the rich in high-tax districts. He doesn’t see how any Congressperson from any of the three high-tax states mentioned could vote for it without being thrown out. Also the tax pros he’s talked to say it’s so vague there’s no way they’ll even talk about it.

Absolutely nobody believes that Congressional legislative output is NOT going to help Real Estate, and Trump himself. So when Trump went out of his way to tell reporters the tax plan wouldn’t help him personally, he was lying.

Jim Chanos, Steve Weiss: Josh Brown:If interest deductibility is changed as has been proposed to close deficit gaps, ALL asset prices, real estate, stocks and bonds, are likely to decrease. No chance.

The “death tax” is a propaganda evergreen for the GOP. There was a very knowledgeable post here Tuesday that indicated that under 11(?) mil estates it’s rarely a factor. This is another come-on for the “I’m gonna be rich SOMEDAY” crowd. With US socioeconomic mobility poor as it is, most of them never will.

This really resembles Obamacare in that Trump is full of proposals and promises, any or all of which can be blandly negated without explanation by one of his tweets or a counterproposal from Ryan, or who knows what else.

Excellent professional comment on 9-pager:

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He got tired of waiting for “the spark from heaven” and decided to take matters into his own hands.

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