How should journalists report on the Republican tax plan? You might think this was obvious: describe the bill as written. But some are saying that this is unfair, because the middle-class tax increases in the legislation won't really happen 1/
As a reminder, the way the bill works is this: tax increases on middle and lower incomes to pay for corporate tax cuts, but a bunch of temporary measures that offset the middle-class hikes for the first few years, then expire 2/
The expiration dates are there for a reason: to keep the deficit impact of the bill in its first decade down, and make it zero in the second decade to bypass the filibuster. So as written, the long run impact is captured by the 2027 effects 3/
But, say some, Congress won't really let those tax breaks expire, so it's "disingenuous" to analyze the bill Rs are actually trying to pass. That's a very strange position, in multiple ways 4/
For one thing, surely politicians need to be held accountable for what they actually do, not what you imagine they might do in the future. Furthermore, it's by no means clear that they will keep those middle-class breaks. Nobody knows 5/
And if we're going to talk about projections of what you think is going to happen, not what they actually wrote, then you have to include likely effects on spending: huge tax cuts that increase the deficit will have to be offset somehow 6/
And any reasonable guess at those spending cuts makes the bill just as bad for the middle class as those expiring tax breaks. You can't have it both ways -- insist that we ignore the actual language of the bill, and also that we ignore its likely consequences 7/
The whole thing is puzzling. My sense is that even now some journalists aren't willing to acknowledge the rawness of Republican top-down class war; they're still looking for ways to make people like Ryan seem less cynical than they are 8/
