Biden infrastructure/tax increase megathread

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Womp womp wompppp. Hopefully Sinemanchin realize the bipartisan deal was for show and hop on the reconciliation train.

Yeah they got their photo op, now time to vote the party line and railroad it all through.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

You all acting like getting this through isn't a massive accomplishment that will help the American people on its own smh.

That’s because it isn’t.  It’s a sh!t sandwich we were prepared to eat to get to $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill. 

No, it isn't. This is really, really important stuff that we've been needing for years. The contents and funding of this bill are genuinely exceptional--and better than any of us could have hoped pre-2021. Don't move the goalposts. This is the most important infrastructure investment since the Eisenhower Interstate System. We've spent the past decade talking about broadband, about transit, about bringing our roads back to a state of good repair. This will do that and more. Topline numbers aren't everything.

Yeah seriously wtf, four years ago there was all this idiotic chatter about a trillion dollar infrastructure bill that would make the GOP the populist left-wing economic party of the Working Class^TM and now that we actually do have a trillion dollar infrastructure bill, we're acting like this is some kind of defeat?

Hundreds of billions of dollars for roads, public transit, passenger rail, electric vehicles, airports, ports, drinking water, environmental projects, power grid, and nationwide broadband is now a defeat?

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Very funny that people here are pretending that a bill that totals to - what, an eighth? Of the original Biden proposal is somehow “getting everything we/Biden wanted”.

Elder care funding is dead. The child tax credit and universal child care are dead. If you’re happy about that, at least go ahead and admit it instead of pretending that “oh, everyone only ever actually wanted the stuff that’s in the small bill”.

Who are you even addressing? No one is saying that. I'm pretty sure everyone here is aware there are two separate bills moving through Congress.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

You guys DO realize that this bill is still a major tax increase on the wealthy, right. The SALT provision only gives a little bit of that tax increase back. It sucks, yes, but let's not get carried away here.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

https://itep.org/key-reform-in-build-back-better-act-would-close-loophole-used-by-the-rich-to-avoid-funding-healthcare/

TL;DR - the 0.9% Medicare surcharge on earned income and the 3.8% investment income tax surcharge that were introduced in the ACA in 2010 had a loophole, where business owners of S-corps and partnerships could avoid it by taking only up to $200k in salary per year but then claiming any income above that as "distributed profits".

The BBB Act closes this loophole so you have to pay the 3.8% investment income tax surcharge regardless of what form the income is paid out as

In 2016, the Joint Committee on Taxation noted that while only a quarter of a percent of partnerships reported receipts over $50 million, these companies reported 72 percent of aggregate partnership receipts. Likewise, less than half a percent of S corporations reported receipts over this threshold, but this small percentage collected 40 percent of all S corporation receipts. Current tax law allows the owners of these enormous businesses to unfairly avoid paying the same taxes as the rest of us.

Famously, the loophole was used by two former presidential candidates, John Edwards and Newt Gingrich. In 1999, John Edwards earned almost $27 million from his law firm, but only claimed $360,000 as wage income, allowing him to avoid nearly $600,000 in Medicare taxes. Similarly, in 2010 former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich earned $2.4 million through his consulting firms. He declared less than a fifth as wages, allowing him to avoid tens of thousands in Medicare taxes.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

"I have tried everything I know to do"

Have you tried voting "aye"? Complete waste of time. At least his daughter got a cushy job.

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

If anything, Manchin probably hates the poor white people he sees all the time in West Virgina more than he thinks about black welfare queens. It's a negative view of humanity akin to the very old-school conservative way of thinking about the poor, that they will vote themselves more money and engorge themselves at the trough, so it's up to him to make sure to keep these people in their place.

He talks about people using paid leave to go hunting(!?!?), do you think he has black people in mind when says that kind of sh**t?

Remember that Manchin originally got elected by campaigning against the kinds of politicians that lower-income white West Virginians tended to support!

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Basic details:

• Tax: 15% minimum corporate tax for companies with $1 billion in revenues + no SALT restoration + closing the carried interest loophole
• Energy: “All of the above” energy production: hydrogen, nuclear, renewables, fossil fuels and energy storage. Simplfy permit process reform for transmission systems, pipelines, and export facilities
• Decarbonization: reduce methane and carbon emissions
• Healthcare: reduce prescription drug costs and health insurance premium

Extremely barebones but probably the only thing that has a chance of passing before the new Congress. The tax stuff is actually pretty interesting, basically austerity by taxing the rich, but the rest...I'll wait to see the full details before passing judgement

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

Basic details:

• Tax: 15% minimum corporate tax for companies with $1 billion in revenues + no SALT restoration + closing the carried interest loophole
• Energy: “All of the above” energy production: hydrogen, nuclear, renewables, fossil fuels and energy storage. Simplfy permit process reform for transmission systems, pipelines, and export facilities
• Decarbonization: reduce methane and carbon emissions
• Healthcare: reduce prescription drug costs and health insurance premium

Extremely barebones but probably the only thing that has a chance of passing before the new Congress. The tax stuff is actually pretty interesting, basically austerity by taxing the rich, but the rest...I'll wait to see the full details before passing judgement

More detailed summary:



Closing the carried interest deduction, which would be a massive "F- you" to wall street, combined with appointing an aggressively pro-labor majority on the NLRB, would be two very strong arguments in favor of being a Biden hack again

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

The tax stuff is pretty unambiguously good, but some of this is still really vague and hard to quantify.

"The bill will also finally allow Medicare to negotiate for prescription drug prices" what does that mean, exactly? Are we getting a sweeping permission to negotiate down all prices? Because that would rule. But if it's like that sh-t stand alone bill that was previously discussed, that only allowed 10 drugs to be negotiated from 2025 and another 10 from 2029, then that's kind of pathetic.

"Reduces carbon emissions by roughly 40 percent by 2030" is also extremely vague, because 40% compared to when? If 2022, then that's awesome. If 2005, then that's kind of meh

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

BTW a little factoid: this now means that Bill Clinton, Barack HUSSEIN Obama, and now Joe Biden have all successfully raised taxes on the rich and/or the largest corporations, something that even many left-wing parties in Europe haven't successfully achieved over the past 35 years