https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/us/politics/tax-bill-republicans.html
"WASHINGTON — The House, forced to vote a second time on the $1.5 trillion tax bill, moved swiftly to pass the final version on Wednesday, clearing the way for President Trump to sign into law the most sweeping tax overhaul in decades.
House lawmakers approved the tax bill 224 to 201 on Wednesday, after being forced to vote on the bill again after last-minute revisions were made to the Senate bill, which passed that chamber 51 to 48 early Wednesday morning."
In addition, by also slipping a rule to kill the individual mandate, the republicans finally realized their dream of gutting Obamacare.
The individual mandate required consumers to buy insurance or pay a penalty. But now...
http://time.com/money/5067044/gop-tax-plan-individual-mandate-obamacare/
"...If healthy people drop out of the market because they are no longer mandated to have coverage, insurers would need to raise their rates to cover the remaining, sicker customer base. The roughly 85% of marketplace customers who qualify for the government’s premium subsidies won’t feel the brunt of these premium increases, because the GOP tax bill doesn’t affect the subsidy structure. But the remainder—those who make too much to qualify for assistance—could find themselves priced out of the market.
What’s more, insurers could choose to exit the market altogether rather than face an unpredictable customer pool, leaving consumers with fewer choices."
Like school children on a field trip, republicans got on buses & went to the white house to celebrate with Trump. I'm sure their wealthy donors will also celebrate for a long, long time.
But for the rest of us, the question now becomes; what will be the practical implications for next year?
According to Trump & the republicans, corporations (who are already sitting on trillions of cash) will use the money they'll get from the GOP tax cut to raise wages.
However, corporations will just pocket the money (since they already publicly said so):"
Corporations Say Publicly They’ll Pocket the Tax Cut, But Republicans Aren’t Listening"
https://theintercept.com/2017/12/19/tax-bill-corporate-cut-stock-buyback-republican/
"Weeks before the Republican-led Congress moved toward final passage of its corporate tax cut bill, major companies had already begun a surge of stock buybacks — confirming critics’ fears that the windfall of lower rates will be used for self-enrichment rather than job growth."
What's more likely to happen, is republicans will go back to worrying about the deficit & they'll try to cut "entitlement" programs like Social Security & Medicare/Medicaid:
https://www.axios.com/tax-cuts-may-make-medicare-and-medicaid-changes-a-tougher-sell-2518645257.html
"After their victory with the tax bill, Republican leaders in the House have said they will go after entitlement and "welfare" spending, with both Medicare and Medicaid potentially on the table."
Thus, many Trump voters will be affected along with the rest of us. Trump sold them a vision of "Make America Great Again" & according to republicans, we in the middle-class should all be seeing more money in our paycheck starting next year. Even if that's true, it now appears medical & health insurance policy costs & premiums will go up as well.
For working stiffs , there's a lot of hoping associated with the GOP/Trump tax bill. For example, hoping corporations will raise wages when they get their massive tax cut.
But for the GOP's wealthy donors, there is no uncertain future since they already got what they paid for. Unfortunately for us, all we can do is hope this bill is eventually repealed before it begins to do real damage to retired people, poor people, working-class, middle-class people, & non-ultra-rich people in general (corporations are not people, my friend).
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