About that tax bill

[W]hen you’ve got a bill being compared to the Fugitive Slave Act, you’ve got a really dead fish on your hands—and the Republicans are now looking like such big fools in the gyrations they’re doing trying to pass it that they’re pretty much writing the Democratic commercials for 2018 every time they get in front of a microphone. Monday’s carnival act was Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, who’s retiring after this term and who, apparently, would like us to believe that he’s already checked out.

Corker, you may recall, opposed the original Senate tax bill because it will send the deficit spiraling into the Van Alen Belt, and he is what the pundits like to call a “deficit hawk.” Late last week, though, he came around and announced that he would be voting for the bill, which pretty much put paid to any Democratic attempt to jam things up, Lisa Murkowski having already been swayed by the vision of oil derricks against the Arctic sky and Susan Collins being god knows where from one moment to the next. However, at the last minute, a number of people—most notably, David Sirota and the crew at the International Business Times—noticed that a late revision in the bill would stand to make both Corker and the president* a pile of dough.

  Charles P Pierce

A last-minute addition to the tax plan will benefit people invested in real estate.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn then went on This Week [...]

STEPHANOPOULOS: [This provision] apparently was added at the last minute. Why was that done? Why was it necessary to include that provision?

CORNYN: Well, we were working very hard. It was a very intense process. As I said, the Democrats refused to participate. And what we’ve tried to do is cobble together the votes we needed to get this bill passed.

OK, so Cornyn didn’t say flat-out that they were trying to tempt Corker off his perch but, as I always say, a nod is as good as a wink to a blind trust. Naturally, on Monday, Corker pronounced himself shocked—SHOCKED!—at the suggestion that he might have changed his position because he stood to profit handsomely from doing so.

He also claimed he hadn't even read the new provision.

“I never saw the actual text.” Despite not reading the bill -- and having time to read it before the final vote scheduled for this week -- he reiterated his support for the bill...

Looked at in the best possible light, Corker’s conundrum illustrates the unseemly haste with which this transformational adjustment of the tax code was cobbled together in order to get the president* and the congressional Republicans a “win” before Christmas. At worst, it looks like Corker got bought off.

Call me jaded, but I suspect it's the latter. Collins, Rubio/Lee and Murkowski were both bought off with their own special deals.

Looked at in the best possible light, Corker’s conundrum illustrates the unseemly haste with which this transformational adjustment of the tax code was cobbled together in order to get the president* and the congressional Republicans a “win” before Christmas. At worst, it looks like Corker got bought off.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.