I am getting so old that I pretty much resent people having babies for whom I am expected to produce quilts. I know that sounds like I am a curmudgeon and that is true, but I am so focused on finishing the Baltimore Album quilt in my lifetime, that these two new quilts are unwelcome intrusions. But I have the first one pieced and layered so there is progress on that front. I have the second for the new baby in Hawaii designed in my head and the colors picked.
Progress on Trump's insistence on tax reform is more erratic than my poor attempts to satisfy my own plans. Paul Ryan's plans for tax reform have been lying dormant for years, waiting until Republicans had control of Congress and the White House. But make no mistake, those plans change the United States. You can decide for yourself whether those changes are good or bad, but Ryan, a recipient of the benefits of the Social Security system after his father's death, wants to remove those same benefits from you and your children. He is a diehard advocate of the philosophy of Ayn Rand, a Russian emigre who ended up living on the largesse of her adopted country.
The poison pill added to the Senate bill today added the insurance mandate of the ACA to the tax bill. They did this for many reasons including the pressure from the White House and the obligation to reduce the money added to the debt so that they could pass this excrescence without any votes from Democrats. I have written many times about how insurance and insurance markets work, but without the individual mandate, if that is the only deletion from the ACA, the cost to those who have pre-existing conditions and depend on the promises of the ACA for medical care will skyrocket.
That's entirely separate from all of the other ridiculous nonsense that is in the bill. Do taxes in the US need change--there is no question of that. Do we want politicians who have their own axes to grind to write this proposal--hell no.
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