Bipartisan?

Lynette Dufton
2 min readFeb 9, 2024

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The “bipartisan” Border Security / Aid to Ukraine and Israel Bill died in Congress this week. Donnie needs that video of illegal immigrant caravans laden with drugs and with murder and rape on their mind storming the border for his campaign. Also, Donnie claims he will negotiate an end to the conflicts in Ukraine and in Gaza within the first week of his presidency. Why send weapons overseas that won’t be needed?

The “bipartisan” Expanded Child Tax Credit / Corporate Tax Break Bill is treading water in Congress as courageous Republicans dither until Donnie tells them whether he likes it or not. Democrats support the bill because it expands the Child Tax Credit for families earning less than $40 K per year. Those Dems, always thinking of poor people even if two-thirds of people who fell into that category identify themselves as Republicans or independents and about a quarter of them lived in the Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oklahoma — all states that wouldn’t vote for Jesus Christ if he was a Democrat.

Republicans support the bill because it allows corporations to “write off” capital expenditures for R&D immediately if they so choose. This is the sort of financial voodoo that allowed (“I’m very, very rich”) Donnie to pay a whopping $750 in income tax in each of the last two years of his presidency.

But Senator Chuck Grassley isn’t sure about the legislation. “Passing a tax bill that makes the president look good — mailing out checks before the election — means he could be reelected, and then we won’t extend the 2017 tax cuts.” Never mind that the mailing-out-checks thing is explicitly prohibited in the bill’s language. What part of “tax credit” is unclear to you, Chuck?

As for his explicit admission that a short-term benefit to low-income parents isn’t worth it if it might mean another four years of President Biden? That’s 15 years of Republican strategy, said out loud. Of course after Mitch McConnell refused to even consider Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court until Donnie was elected and could give us Brett Kavanaugh, it is simply “politics as usual”.

Heaven forbid that the 2017 tax cuts that reduced the corporate rate from 35% to 21% might go away. Many CEO’s haven’t bought their mega-yachts yet.

By Ed Dufton

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Lynette Dufton

These posts are written by my father, Ed Dufton, who has an incredible knack of condensing the day’s news into a witty and insightful commentary on society.