Jared Bernstein and Kathleen Bryant at The American Prospect write—The 2018 Economy, in 11 Graphs. The good, the bad, and the ugly. An excerpt:
In 2018, Congressional Republicans once again proposed cuts to IRS funding for the coming fiscal year. Since 2010, IRS funding has steadily eroded from $14.3 billion to $11.7 billion in FY 2018, with Senate and House Appropriators proposing even deeper cuts for FY 2019. These budget cuts have impeded the IRS’s ability to conduct basic activities like outreach or answering phones, but most concerningly, they have undercut the IRS’s ability to audit high-income individuals and corporations. Given that the 2017 tax law exacerbated income inequality by providing entirely new avenues for tax gaming among the wealthy, and that the federal government is forgoing billions of dollars in tax revenue from IRS audits that could be used to fund progressive priorities, it is clear that this seemingly bureaucratic budget issue has tremendous equity implications.
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On this date at Daily Kos in 2003—Republicard: spend like there's no tomorrow:
Introducing the Republicard. First practiced under the record deficit-spending of the Reagan-Bush administrations, and now re-issued under the fiscal wreckage of George Bush with a trifeca of Republican-rule to again spend like theres no tomorrow. Miles, the creator of the card:
Last week I was hearing about a proposal that had been introduced into Congress to honor Ronald Reagan by putting him on the dime coin. Aside from the fact that FDR, creator of the "March of Dimes", certainly deserves to stay on that coin (and Nancy Reagan agrees)... it occurred to me that if someone were to honor George W. Bush, given his enormous deficits, the most appropriate place to do so would be... a credit card. So I imagined what it might look like, and came up with the RepubliCard: (This idea simultaneously occurred to political cartoonist Tom Toles who had a cartoon on this theme appear the very next day).
Molly, the wife of Miles, had the opportunity to hand one of these cards to Governor Dean last week. And thanks to more production by Miles, you too can hand them out to your friends.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Times are too crazy to keep Armando off the air. Just hours to shutdown. The nuclear option floated. Are there any rules at all? If not, can a shutdown shut Mueller down? Rules say no, but lolyolonm. Trump evacuates Syria because we won. Mattis out.