REPUBLICANS FACE TAX INCREASES

Republicans face tax increases. Opponents of President Biden's sweeping tax overhaul and planned increase in the tax rate for high income individuals and corporate America, will face large tax increases themselves. And so the question that never is asked, is this a conflict of interest for a sitting member of Congress to vote on a bill that would raise taxes on themselves ? Well the obvious answer is they have to vote on the measure, but it shows just how broken the system can be that the very members who benefit from voting it down are allowed to cast those votes. The same holds true for members who vote on proposals that benefit the stock companies they own. Disclosure rules state they should recuse themselves, but we hear every year of Senators and Congress people who didn't, benefitted financially, sometimes to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then get no fines or jail time for it. If the average American did the same, the insider trading laws would be applied and they would end up in prison. Republicans face tax increases.

Many of the Republican Senators who backed the 2017 tax cuts realized big tax savings from the real estate tax breaks. At least 29 of the 47 Republican members of the committees that worked on the tax bill held interests in real estate, according to the Center for Public Integrity. The American Families Plan would back that "like kind" exchange exemption. The proposal would "end the special real estate tax break--that allows real estate investors to defer taxation when they exchange property--for gains greater than $500,000.

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, this month claimed that "the economy was roaring back to life before Biden became president", and decried Biden's proposals. Yet in reality when Biden took office, the economy was teetering due to the Covid winter, the lack of a vaccine, and the millions of Americans who stayed at home, scared of being killed by a virus that was mismanaged by former President Trump. Until the virus was dealt with, the U.S. economy was not going to come back to life. President Biden in short order, determined that what he was told about vaccine supply was not true, they had virtually none, and that no plans existed for distribution. His administration made that the number one goal and did a fairly effective job of it.