House Dems Introduce TRILLION Dollar Tax Reform Thing

The Anonymous Lobbyist, who is also the Anonymous Tit-Watcher , is furious about the Democrats' new tax plan, and we've always got space for that. Enjoy.


After nearly a year of dicking around (and being mistaken for the chain-smoking Minority Leader John Boehner on the phone, which totally pisses him off), husky-voiced Ways and Means Committee Chair Charlie Rangel finally unveiled his tax cut package for the massesthis morning. Hey, did you know that it's for the middle class, which includes people that make $200,000/year (even though the median income in this country is actually $48,200 )? But, I'll bet Charlie feels totally middle classes when he's rubbing shoulders with all his rich donors on his meager pittance of a salary .

Rangel has been wanting to get rid of the Alternative Minimum Tax all year (guess who pays that a lot? relatively wealthy people on the Eastern seaboard ), but then some guys in his party were all like, um, dude, seriously, tax cuts for the rich don't play in my district and wanted tax relief for the actual middle class. The Republicans started riding his ass about it, and then it was almost November. So in addition to doing some little temporary thing to keep some people from paying the AMT next year, he's got this other plan to eliminate the AMT, raise taxes on the people he considers wealthy, and lower the corporate tax rate a little but eliminate some deductions that either sound good to voters (taxing income made in other countries!) or that are completely esoteric (mandatory cost basis reporting?).

He's going to try to pass the big plan in time for the conventions next year -- once he loads it up with enough sweeteners to get the votes. In other words, he's going to do a bunch of stuff, compromise like crazy, call it a tax reform, tell you that you're definitely going to be paying lower taxes and that your rich neighbors will be paying more. The hope is that, like most people, you don't pay attention to either your taxes or the intricacies of tax policy but prefer soothing sound bites. There's a reason the guy has been re-elected 18 times (other than partisan gerrymandering and the power of incumbency, naturally).

 House Democrats propose tax overhaul [Yahoo News]