Tax Bill Debacle

Congress has muddied the water on the big Tax Cut Bill. Their own Rules are destroying their ability to do anything that makes sense.  They will defend their contorted processes and say ‘we don’t understand how legislation is done’.  We are saying that we don’t like the way they are not delivering anything that makes sense.

 

They should have eliminated the 60 Vote Rule in the Senate to avoid having to pass Tax Cuts using “reconciliation”. Bills should be clean and targeted to only include one “fix” at a time.  The one we need now is the Corporate Tax Cut and it should be passed as a stand-alone Bill with no amendments.

 

Passing the Corporate Tax Cut from 35% to 15% into law immediately and effective in 2017 or 2018 is critical to restoring the manufacturing jobs that will lift US citizens out of poverty..

 

The cost of moving the corporate tax from 35% to 15% has been estimated at $5.5 trillion over 10 years.

 

http://www.crfb.org/blogs/how-much-will-trumps-tax-plan-cost

 

That’s $550 Billion a year. Half of this should be assumed to be paid for with revenue increases coming from increased economic activity, higher wages and higher tax revenue. The other half should be covered by cutting government waste and spending that is not critical. This includes corporate welfare, loopholes, unnecessary subsidies for ethanol, wind and solar, grants and tax subsidies to select industries. This spending cut list should be taken up in a separate Spending Cut Bill.

 

Government can continue to help keep farmers from bankruptcy and drought, but they need to begin cutting support for beach houses.

 

I would like to see the legislative process reformed to begin with a conversation that focuses on the deliverables and eliminates the drama. I would like to see immediate show of hands votes on these issues. I would like to see ideas discussed quickly without the pomp and circumstance like we do in management meetings in private sector businesses. The forced politeness we see in the Congress takes too much time and doesn’t deal with the facts.

 

In government, there has been no incentive to contain costs, cut waste, improve throughput, address priorities or repair broken processes. The goals in government are to deny incompetence, maintain budget increases, pander to dangerous special interests, keep voters dumb and get re-elected.

 

In a business, if the production group wants a piece of equipment that will increase production throughput and improve quality, they make their case. If their case is strong, the equipment is eventually approved.

 

As consultant to Firearms Training Systems, I pushed them to purchase a Coordinate Measuring device that would allow them to automate the inspection of machined parts. They had a high volume of these parts and the assembly group was bogged down trying to assemble parts that didn’t fit.

My argument was that inspection was trying to do their job with a string and a home-made ruler. I got several engineers to help and we got approval to buy it.

 

It gave inspection the improved process it needed, through-put improved in inspection, assembly, shipping and receivables. We removed a bottleneck that was preventing sales growth.

 

If the marketing group in a business wants to increase advertising and their arguments make no sense, it is discarded. In Congress, the process never kills the bad ideas and their laws are full of bad ideas.

 

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader