We begin today’s roundup with this piece on how — surprise, surprise — Republicans are adding more giveaways to the rich to ram their tax bill through:
The Republican tax bill hurtling through Congress is increasingly tilting the United States tax code to benefit wealthy Americans, as party leaders race to shore up wavering lawmakers who are requesting more help for high-earning business owners.
On Monday, as Republican lawmakers returned to Washington determined to quickly pass their tax overhaul, senators were in feverish talks to resolve concerns that could bedevil the bill’s passage. With pressure increasing on Republicans to produce a legislative victory, lawmakers are contemplating changes that would exacerbate the tax bill’s divide between the rich and the middle class.
Those include efforts to further reward certain high-income business owners who are already receiving a tax break in the Senate bill but who are at the center of a concerted push by conservative lawmakers and trade groups to sweeten those benefits.
Here’s Paul Krugman’s analysis:
The bill Republican leaders are trying to ram through this week without hearings, without time for even a basic analysis of its likely economic impact, is the biggest tax scam in history. It’s such a big scam that it’s not even clear who’s being scammed — middle-class taxpayers, people who care about budget deficits, or both.
One thing is clear, however: One way or another, the bill would hurt most Americans. The only big winners would be the wealthy — especially those who mainly collect income from their assets rather than working for a living — plus tax lawyers and accountants who would have a field day exploiting the many loopholes the legislation creates.
The core of the bill is a huge redistribution of income from lower- and middle-income families to corporations and business owners. Corporate tax rates go down sharply, while ordinary families are nickel-and-dimed by a series of tax changes, no one of which is that big a deal in itself, but which add up to significant tax increases on almost two-thirds of middle-class taxpayers.
Catherine Rampell:
Why the haste?
Republicans are of course desperate to notch a legislative win before the year ends, especially given their failed promise to repeal Obamacare.
But perhaps more important, Republican lawmakers need to pass this terrible bill before voters — and indeed lawmakers themselves — have a chance to learn what's in it.
Senior director at the Campaign Legal Center Walter Shaub asks a key question: when will Kellyanne Conway finally be held accountable for her violations of the Hatch Act?
The special counsel is facing the biggest test of his career. I’m referring not to Robert S.Mueller III but to Henry Kerner of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), the small agency that investigates Hatch Act violations. That law prohibits executive branch employees from using their government positions to influence elections, which is precisely what presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway did last week. Whether Kerner will enforce the law is another matter. [...]
What happens to Conway will send an unmistakable message to the rest of the federal workforce about this administration’s commitment to enforcing the Hatch Act. Kerner asked for this thankless job, and he’s taken an oath to enforce the Hatch Act. His willingness to pursue this slam-dunk case will tell us whether he has any intention of fulfilling that oath. If he does seek to hold Conway accountable, his penalty recommendation will tell us how vigorously he intends to go about fulfilling that oath. We should all watch what Kerner does next.
Yale law professor Peter Shuck details the bureaucratic showdown at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has as its acting director an Obama appointee but Mike Mulvaney is also claiming to be “acting director”:
[I]n creating the bureau as part of the Dodd-Frank reforms in 2010, Congress intentionally gave it an unusual degree of autonomy. If the bureau’s powers are constitutional, as I believe they are, they can be overturned only by Congress — which means that Ms. English can run the agency until the Senate confirms a successor to start in July when the term ends, or the president removes her “for cause,” which means more than mere political or policy disagreement.
The bureau’s constitutional status has always been controversial; the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is poised to issue an opinion in a challenge to the agency that is likely to go to the Supreme Court. The constitutional issues at stake go way back to the very first Congress, in 1789, when it gave the president the power to remove the secretary of state at will. This has been the rule for cabinet officials ever since. But Congress controls the creation, powers, structure and budgets of the executive agencies, including the standards for removing sub-cabinet officials. This element of the separation of powers at the heart of our constitutional system ensures constant conflicts between the president and Congress.
Paul Waldman at The Week:
Here's a tip: When lawmakers begin to argue based on abstract principles like the separation of powers, it's a signal that at the very least one ought to be skeptical that there might be a different agenda at work. Republicans have shown many times that they have zero interest in the principles they claim to hold. They weren't actually concerned about consular security or proper email management — they just wanted something to beat up Hillary Clinton with. They aren't actually concerned about deficits, as they always claim when there's a Democrat in the White House, and they're proving it right now with a tax bill that would add $1.5 trillion in deficits so corporations can get a tax break. Lofty ideals are simply offered as cover for some far less savory purpose.
So it is with their attacks on the CFPB, and even those who try to get more specific fail to persuade. If you look around at conservative think tanks, you won't find much discussion of the billions of dollars the agency has forced financial companies to return to victims of scams, frauds, and abuse. Instead, you'll find complaints that "the CFPB is limiting the availability of credit, and curtailing Americans' choices for investment and wealth creation."
The New York Times, meanwhile, calls on disclosure of congressional sexual harassment settlements:
Decades of hushed-up complaints show sexual misconduct is as terrible an open secret in Congress as in Hollywood. Legislators have a chance to correct their poor handling of a national problem. They should seize it.
On a final note, David Graham at The Atlantic calls Trump’s “Pocahontas” slur joke this week his “most egregious joke yet”:
On Monday, he stood in front of a portrait of President Andrew Jackson to thank World War II Navajo code talkers, using the opportunity to mock a senator who claimed Cherokee descent, by using a Powhatan name. [...]
Native American groups have long criticized Trump for calling the senator Pocahontas. While he means to belittle Warren, they feel that it is also belittling to them. The nickname insults the original Pocahontas, a tragic figure who was kidnapped, and then later traveled to England with her husband John Rolfe, where she died; it conflates Pocahontas’s Powhatan heritage with other groups; and it is frequently used to mock Native Americans.