In the News
WASHINGTON - On MSNBC this week, Lloyd Doggett sounded a tone of resignation while trying to puncture the seeming inevitability of Republicans' legislation to overhaul the American tax system.
"I view the bill as a giant political life preserver for Republicans who've been unable to get anything else done this year and haven't given a lot of thought to the real impact on Americans of adding so much debt, a trillion so dollars," Doggett said.
One patient got a $3,606 bill for a four-mile ride. Another was charged $8,460 for a trip from a hospital that could not handle his case to another that could. Still another found herself marooned at an out-of-network hospital, where she'd been taken by ambulance without her consent.
Donald Trump is back from Asia. What do you think he'll be doing next?
A) Pardoning the Thanksgiving turkey.
B) Urging Congress to pass a clean, simple, middle-class-friendly tax bill.
C) Pardoning Sean Hannity.
The answer is A, obviously. Turkey gets a reprieve on Tuesday. And rumors that the president has ordered the execution of all turkeys previously pardoned by Barack Obama are not true. It was a joke on a website. Stop telling people that!
A Senate plan to overhaul taxes being released Thursday will delay for one year a cut in the top corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%, one of President Trump's top priorities, according to a Senate staff member who was familiar with the bill but not authorized to discuss it publicly.
The House Ways and Means Committee was working Thursday to release its tax changes, which would immediately drop the corporate rate. But lawmakers are struggling to keep the total cost of tax cuts under a $1.5 trillion limit they set in a budget resolution adopted earlier this year.