Sunday, December 3, 2017

Trouble in Mind

Revised and Updated

Senator Hatch "has a rough time" with renewing the Children's Health Insurance Program.
About $14 billion a year, and it's true small kids are shamefully slow on paying their medical bills like "I think Daddy takes care of it right?"

Everybody—starting with Joe Scarborough!—took this a little bit out of context, I'm sorry to say. What Hatch said, as reported in The Guardian, is this:

“Nobody believes more in the Chip programme than I,” said Hatch, 83, in answer to [Sherrod] Brown. “I invented it, I was the one who wrote it.”
After agreeing that the late Massachusetts Democrat Ted Kennedy also contributed to the creation of Chip, Hatch continued: “Let me tell you something: we’re going to do Chip. There’s no question about it in my mind. And it’s got to be done the right way.
“But … the reason Chip’s having trouble is because we don’t have money anymore. And to just add more and more spending and more and more spending…
“I happen to think Chip has done a terrific job for people who really needed the help. I’ve taken the position here for my whole Senate service: I believe in helping those who cannot help themselves but would if they could.
“I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves – won’t lift a finger – and expect the federal government to do everything.
“Unfortunately the liberal philosophy has created millions of people that way, who believe everything they ever are or hope to be depends upon the federal government rather than the opportunities that this great country grants them. And I’ve got to say, I think it’s pretty hard to argue against these comments.”
So he isn't complaining about the CHIP beneficiaries, children whose parents earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to buy insurance; these are the deserving poor, whom he's taken under his personal wing. No, he's complaining about the millions of people created by the liberal philosophy who expect the federal government to do everything for them and who are to blame for the fact that "we don't have money any more." That's not the same as what Scarborough accused him of, though it's pretty mean-spirited and dumb.

But the bill Hatch just helped to vote through the Senate allows the proprietors of small businesses (as long as they're not doctors, lawyers, accountants, piano teachers, or plumbers) to deduct 23% of what they make from the taxable income line: in other words if a teacher and a storekeeper both earn $100,000, the teacher's taxable income is $100,000 and the storekeeper's is $77,000. Just to commemorate the honor of being the bourgeois. If a businessman buys a new Mercedes S-Class sedan for $100,000 he'll be able to deduct $50,000 from his taxes (over a five-year period) instead just $15,000 as now.The government that may not have enough money for the health care of poor but working parents (Hatch swears they're going to pass it even as he complains that it's "having trouble") has enough to give it up in this whimsical way.

Chuckles Grassley, on the other hand, not taken out of context, in the Iowa Daily Register:
“I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies,” Grassley told the Register in a story posted yesterday.
Who among us wouldn't be dying with a $20 million fortune if not for spending it all going to the darn movie?


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