QOTD: Ed Kilgore
by digby
“The nasty little surprise conservatives are preparing for us when we all finally get around to “tax reform” is that they will launch a major assault on the EITC, which they increasingly associate with the “lucky duckies” who don’t pay federal income taxes.”
This is what “tax reform” is going to end up looking like in the end. Perhaps some moneyed interests will temporarily lose their “tax expenditures” in exchange for scaling back all these lucky ducky incentives but only the former has full time lobbyists lining up to find new ways to get them back into the tax code.
Keep in mind that these lucky ducky tax expenditures have been the only way that liberals have been able to do much of anything for working families and the poor for the past half century. With universal, government programs off the table, this was it. And now we are going to start the march to their dismantling too.
And since the Democrats have decided that the best thing we can do for Americans is temporarily extract some taxes from rich people to pay down the deficit (so that their investments will be secure)I’m not holding my breath that they’ll put up much of a fight. once again, it will depend upon the GOP being full-fledged lunatics. And I suppose that’s actually a fairly good bet.
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