1. John Cassidy: The Final Version of the G.O.P. Tax Bill Is a Corrupt, Cruel, Budget-Busting Hairball

It is hardly surprising that Republicans don’t want to give anyone too much time to look closely at their latest handiwork. The final tax bill is the product of a conference committee that was tasked with reconciling the different bills passed in the House and the Senate. Almost eleven hundred pages long, the final bill is just as regressive and fiscally irresponsible as either of the two earlier bills, and it is arguably more so. At its center is a huge tax cut for corporations and unincorporated business partnerships—such as the ones that Donald Trump owns—while arrayed around the edges are all sorts of carve-outs and giveaways to favored industries and interest groups.

Nowhere to be found in the bill are three elements that House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and their colleagues originally promised to deliver when they urged the American public to embrace tax reform: revenue neutrality, simplicity, and fairness. The final bill is a corrupt, budget-busting hairball.

According to its authors, the bill will increase the budget deficit by about $1.5 trillion over ten years. That’s a lot of money, obviously, but it’s an underestimate. If you adjust the numbers for a series of accounting gimmicks, such as expiration provisions that are unlikely to go into effect, the real cost seems likely to come out at more than two trillion dollars.  https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-final-version-of-the-gop-tax-bill-is-a-corrupt-cruel-budget-busting-hairball

2. Eugene Robinson: This tax deal is great for Trump. What a coincidence!

One of the biggest beneficiaries of the massive, slapdash tax bill that President Trump and Republican lawmakers celebrated at the White House on Wednesday will be, wait for it . . . President Trump. What a coincidence!

The rest of Trump’s wealthy family will benefit lavishly as well, including his son-in-law and all-purpose adviser, Jared Kushner. And, of course, it’s not a coincidence at all. The chance that this president would preside over a revision of the tax code without lining his own pockets was zero. Anyone who believed Trump’s claim that the tax bill would “cost me a fortune” hasn’t been paying attention.

It is not possible to calculate precisely how much money the president will save, because he — unlike all other recent presidents — refuses to release his tax returns. But the figure is surely in the millions, assuming Trump is anywhere near as wealthy as he claims. His extended clan will have plenty of liquidity for Donald Jr. and Eric to jet off to Africa and kill more leopards and water buffaloes; for Jared and Ivanka to disappear on ski trips whenever they need to claim deniability regarding the latest administration outrage; and for the president himself to consume as many Big Macs, Filet-o-Fishes and chocolate shakes as his constitution can bear.

Join me in a thought experiment. Imagine that the legislature of some other country — Brazil, say, or Mozambique, or Thailand — decided to rewrite the tax code, with no public hearings or expert testimony, in a way that benefited the rich overall, with maximum financial gain for businesses like that of the sitting head of government. What would you say?

I’m pretty sure you’d use the word corruption. And you would be right.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-sweetheart-tax-deal--for-the-trumps/2017/12/21/17546880-e68b-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html

3. Paul Krugman: Tax-Cut Santa Is Coming to Town

It’s that time of year again. Some of us will get nice gifts, while others will get lumps of coal.

The centerpiece of the Republican tax cut legislation is a huge tax cut for corporations. Republicans claim that this tax cut will be passed on to workers in the form of higher wages, but most independent studies conclude that even in the long run only between one-fifth and one-quarter of the tax cut will trickle down to workers. And the fraction will be much lower in the short run — say, the next few years. So this is basically a tax cut for shareholders.

And who are these shareholders? About a third of the total benefits will go to foreigners. Among U.S. residents, while many people have some stock in their retirement accounts, those amounts are generally small. Even including indirect holdings through mutual funds, the top 1 percent of domestic households owns 40 percent of stocks, the bottom 80 percent just 7 percent. So when Tax-Cut Santa comes to town, it’s definitely good to be rich.

You see, the second most important piece of this tax bill, after the corporate tax giveaway, is a drastic tax cut for business owners, who will end up paying much less in taxes than people with the same income who work as someone else’s employee.

It’s hard to come up with any good rationale for this move, which will discriminate among taxpayers in a way that bears no relationship to any coherent policy goal. It will, however, offer a big financial windfall to a number of elected officials, especially Donald Trump.

And what about those promises that rich people wouldn’t get a tax cut, that the tax system would get simpler, that you’d be able to file on a postcard, and all that? All I can say is, ho ho ho.  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/21/opinion/tax-cut-santa.html

4. Dean Obeidallah: Trump and the GOP Just Ensured That the 2018 Blue Wave Will Be Yuuuge

There’s one glaring difference from the 2010 election: Donald J. Trump. People hate him. And not just in a political sense--but personally. That’s why despite a very solid economy Trump is ending his first year far and away the most unpopular president in the polling era at the same point in his presidency. Per recent polls, only 34 percent believe Trump is honest, only 37 percent believe he cares about the average American and only 32 percent believe he shares their values. And people are seeing through Trump’s recent lie that he will personally pay more under the GOP tax plan as evidenced by two thirds of Americans saying they believe the GOP tax cut will enrich him and his family.

So Trump can offer us all the crumbs he wants from his tax plan for the wealthy but it won’t make up for his trafficking in hate to win his election, his defending of white supremacists, his non-stop lying, his sexual misconduct, his shaming of victims he assaulted and the like. Americans clearly are not forgiving Trump for this history, and nor should they.

Anger makes people come out and vote in midterms, and I can assure you the fury toward Trump is palpable and runs deep. And it’s growing more intense thanks to the unfairness of the GOP tax cuts. If all those who oppose Trump’s history of hate and his policies turn out to vote in November – just as we saw in the recent elections in Virginia and Alabama – Democrats will ride a beautiful, massive blue wave that will wash the Republicans from Congress. And from there, the hope is either via impeachment or another massive blue wave in 2020, we can then sweep Trump out of the White House and back into oblivion where he belongs.  https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-and-the-gop-just-ensured-that-the-2018-blue-wave-will-be-yuuuge

5. Paul Waldman: The GOP's reality problem

This is one area where the Trump administration is no different than any other Republican administration: They're going to grouse about the media no matter what happens. And while even Democratic presidents say they aren't covered fairly, the complaint serves different purposes for Republicans.

While liberals have many complaints about how the news media does its job, the liberal critique of the news plays nothing like the central role within their movement that the conservative critique does in theirs. In part it's because of the power of simplicity. Liberals have a complex set of criticisms they make about the press, but conservatives have only one: "liberal bias." It doesn't have to be explained, and it can be applied to literally any issue. No matter what the topic of the moment is — an election campaign, a policy debate, a scandal — conservatives will always charge that the media is being biased against them. The charge feeds their base's finely honed sense of grievance, inoculates that base against uncomfortable facts, and keeps journalists under constant pressure to move coverage in a direction more friendly to Republicans.

But if Sarah Sanders believes that the press has taken an even more skeptical stance toward this administration than it has toward previous ones, she's right. There's a simple reason for that: There's never been a president or an administration that lies in such spectacular volume or with such mind-boggling shamelessness as this one.

To take just one example, if you're a reporter and Sanders looks you in the eye and tells you that Trump will pay more in taxes as a result of this bill, what are you supposed to say about that? While we don't know exactly how big a tax cut Trump will get because he refuses to release his tax returns, we absolutely know that he's getting a cut. He'll benefit not only from the reduction in the top rate, but mostly from the gigantic "pass-through" loophole the bill opens up (the Trump Organization is essentially a collection of hundreds of pass-through entities). The only question is whether the bill is worth millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars, or hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump. http://theweek.com/articles/744410/gops-reality-problem

6. Steve Coll: The Distrust That Trump Relies Upon

Even in a stable constitutional republic, a cynical or unmoored citizenry presents an opportunity for demagogues and populists. As much as stagnant wages in former manufacturing regions, glaring economic inequality, or white backlash after the Obama Presidency, the country’s disillusionment with institutions enabled Donald Trump’s election. Trump had a sound instinct as he took office that public disgust with élites, including those running the Republican Party, ran so deep that he—even as a New York billionaire—could get away with outrageous attacks on people or agencies previously believed to be off limits for a President, because of the political backlash that the attacks would generate. After his Inauguration, for example, Trump did not hesitate to denigrate the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies for promoting their independent judgment that Russia had sought to aid his campaign. And the President’s opportunistic assaults on less popular institutions—such as the news media and Congress—have riled his base.

All this suggests the need for a certain realism and vigilance about the rising volume of attacks by Trump and his allies on Robert Mueller, the special counsel leading the investigation into possible Russian interference in the election and (increasingly) related issues, and on the F.B.I., whose agents carry out much of the investigative work. Presidents Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton all denigrated the counsels who investigated them. Nixon went so far as to fire some of those he saw as his tormentors, in the infamous Saturday Night Massacre. Judging by the indictments of certain Trump associates, such as his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and the coöperation agreements by others, notably Michael Flynn, his former national-security adviser, it is conceivable that during the next year Trump will face a choice between radical action—issuing preëmptive pardons, firing Mueller or the Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein—and allowing someone close to him, perhaps even a family member, to face criminal charges. It is hard to imagine him reacting to that dilemma with care or caution.  https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-distrust-that-trump-relies-upon

7. Susan Milligan: Ignoring the Will of the People

The $1.5 trillion tax bill, hailed with glee and relief by Republicans eager to appease donors and desperate for the year's first major legislative win, is the most unpopular major piece of legislation to pass in decades.

That may sound remarkable, but it's not the only case where public opinion – exhaustively collected, analyzed and reported by pollsters, interest groups and political parties – appears to have had little impact on a matter of public interest. President Barack Obama's Deferred Access for Childhood Arrivals program to allow certain young immigrants to stay in the country is also overwhelmingly approved of by the electorate. But Congress failed to codify that program as it prepared to wind up for the year. Background checks for gun buyers, too, enjoys widespread public approval, polls consistently show – but that idea, too, never manages to get enough votes for passage.

So what's the congressional calculation? Do they not trust the polls, or care what Americans think? Lawmakers do indeed care, pollsters and political analysts say. They just care more about what certain people think and want.

As for the tax bill, "the Republicans are betting that by the time people realize what a turkey this bill is, it will be somebody else's problem,". And that problem may be dumped onto the tax bill-hating Democrats, should they succeed in wresting control of Congress. -- Stan Collender, executive vice president at Qorvis MSLGROUP and a leading expert on the federal budget and taxes says.  https://www.usnews.com/news/the-report/articles/2017-12-22/why-the-wildly-unpopular-tax-bill-passed

8. Eugene Robinson: Trump’s First Year Was Even Worse Than Feared

Grit your teeth. Persevere. Just a few more days and this awful, rotten, no-good, ridiculous, rancorous, sordid, disgraceful year in the civic life of our nation will be over. Here’s hoping that we all — particularly special counsel Robert S. Mueller III — have a better 2018.

Many of us began 2017 with the consoling thought that the Donald Trump presidency couldn’t possibly be as bad as we feared. It turned out to be worse.

Did you ever think you would hear a president use the words “very fine people” to describe participants in a torch-lit rally organized by white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan? Did you ever think you would hear a U.S. ambassador to the United Nations thuggishly threaten that she would be “taking names” of countries that did not vote on a General Assembly resolution the way she wanted? Did you ever think the government of the world’s biggest military and economic power would reject not just science but also empiricism itself, preferring to use made-up “alternative facts” as the basis for major decisions?

We knew that Trump was narcissistic and shallow, but on Inauguration Day it was possible to at least hope he was self-aware enough to understand the weight that now rested on his shoulders, and perhaps grow into the job. He did not. If anything, he has gotten worse.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-first-year-was-even-worse-than-feared/2017/12/25/b0991572-e753-11e7-ab50-621fe0588340_story.html