Tax Bill Insta-Reactions

I guess the first question is: how different is it from the House bill?  Because we could be going through this all again if the House GOP insists on doing stuff that is beyond the pale for Collins and ....


Oh, who am I kidding?  This bill is supremely awful and was not regular order, so McCain flipped (which was predictable but still annoying and frustrating) and Collins sold out Maine.  Flake is, well, flakey.  At least Murkowski got a key priority for some of her constituents--more drilling where the wildlife used to be protected. Only Corker proved to have some scruples somewhere.

The only real solace I can take from this tax bill, which is destined to hurt most Americans and also hurt America in the world, is that the GOP will pay a huge price for it.  They created so many easy ads for the Democrats:

• "My opponent made it easier for you to buy and maintain a private plane while taking away tax deductions for teachers to buy equipment for the classroom."
• "You lost your access to health care, but at least you can afford the one school in the US that got a tax deduction (Hillsdale College)."
• "Hey, remember when the GOP cared about deficits?  Good times"
• "Kiss medicare and medicaid goodbye"

 Ok, I suck at ad-writing, but it is pretty clear that this bill is best named, by Pod Saves America, "The Donor Relief Act."  Complete with clips of GOP folks saying that they were doing this for the donors and clear evidence that the GOP cut and pasted from the lists the lobbyists sent to Santa.  Yes, Fox and Breitbart will cover it in a way to disguise this stuff, but the Democrats just need to get a few percentage points of GOP voters to realize that the party in power of both houses and the White House have just stacked the deck against them.  Sure, the Dems can screw this up, but I do think the voting last month (so long ago) indicates that the Republicans are going to lose in 2018 in a big way, and even more so now that the Dems are armed with this bill.

What is the difference between Dems and GOP these days?  Look at this tax bill.