“Come on guys, get to work,” Brian Sozzi writes for TheStreet. “If you don’t, the historic stock market rally is going to go up in flames.”
“The biggest ideas for overhauling the nation’s tax code are either dead or on political life support, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. At the heart of the issue are Republican lawmakers being unable to find ways to offset the deep tax cuts that many promised on the campaign trail,” Sozzi writes. “What is taking shape, or so it appears, is a grand bargain on taxes that is far removed from what President Trump rode to office on. Moreover, it’s looking like a tax plan that could roil the markets, where hot names such as Action Alerts PLUS charity portfolio holdings Apple, Alphabet, Facebook, Netflix, and even Walmart have rallied on the premise of more cash being put in the pockets of consumers and corporate coffers.”
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“The clear winner, so far, is the status quo,” Richard Rubin reports for The Wall Street Journal. “Republicans, who control both chambers, are scouring the tax code, searching for ways to offset the deep rate cuts they desire. But their proposals for border adjustment—which would tax imports—and for ending the business interest deduction and making major changes to individual tax breaks for health and retirement have all hit resistance within the party. The only big revenue-raising provision with anything close to Republican consensus is repealing the deduction for state and local taxes, and that idea faces objections from blue-state lawmakers in the party.”
“The GOP’s dreams have collided with interest-group lobbying and the tax system’s reality,” Rubin reports. “Politicians all profess to hate the tax code, but they don’t agree on exactly what they hate. Voters gripe about complexity but are wary of losing cherished breaks that are woven into the economy.”
“Republicans are still hunting for ideas to soften the revenue loss from their proposed tax-rate cuts, and party leaders say they will finish a historic tax-code revision by year’s end. President Donald Trump said on Twitter late Sunday that the process was ahead of schedule and ‘moving along…very well,'” Rubin reports. “One possibility is a temporary tax cut that would expire to comply with rules preventing long-run deficits. ‘Permanent is better than temporary, and temporary is better than nothing,’ Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told the House Ways and Means Committee last week. Another path is settling for a 25% corporate rate instead of the 20% backed by House Republicans or the 15% proposed by Mr. Trump.”
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MacDailyNews Take: Real change is hard.
No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth! — President Ronald Reagan