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With the stroke of President Trump's pen, long-promised tax reform is now the law of land. With it comes more than a few excellent developments—a major, overdue reduction in the corporate rates, a shift to a territorial system of collection, caps on tax expenditures such as deductions for state and local taxes and mortgage interest, the end of the individual mandate for Obamacare—and a whole new set of concerns, none more pressing that a certain reduction in revenue even as government spending increases.Like Obamacare, this tax-reform legislation was purely a partisan affair, which is rarely the best way forward for major legislation, leaving it open to quick revision, repeal, or slow death (see: Obamacare). Still, precisely because one party could muscle through something, regardless of how controversial and unpopular (tax reform, like Obamacare at its passage, is polling terribly with the public), it's relatively easy. It just takes the determination of the majority party. President Obama and the Democrats had to pull out all the stops and pour "sweeteners" down the throats of recalcitrant party members, many of whom choked to political death (where have you gone, Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska?).So here's the thing: What are Republicans going to do on spending? Cutting taxes is the frosting, not the cake, when it comes to actually making America great again . . . you see [House Speaker Paul] Ryan already walking away from the single-biggest driver on automatic increases in government spending. And give Ryan at least some fake street-cred for even bothering to bullshit about tackling expensive entitlements. His counterpart in the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has even taken welfare reform off the table for the coming year . . . While signing the tax bill into law, Trump himself eschewed talk about cutting spending, choosing instead to talk excitedly about getting back to infrastructure spending, which kept calling an "easy" sell . . . But because history presents itself first as tragedy and then as farce, we've gotten a Benny Hill version of the old shakedown: Republicans have promised to cut taxes now and reduce spending later. And have already reneged on that, before the ink on President Trump's signature dried. Or, if we're being strictly accurate, before the legislation even landed on his desk.Enjoy the tax cuts, which will put extra money in most of our pockets. I think I'm going to save most of mine for that rainy day that's out there on the horizon.
