Only about 2% of those polled reported any benefit from the new GOP tax bill.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

Only 2 percent of American adults reported receiving a bonus, a bump in pay or another perk due to the Republican tax overhaul passed in December, a new survey found. 

Twenty-seven percent of respondents in the Reuters/Ipsos poll said they believe the legislation will increase the amount they pay in taxes, while 24 percent said they think they will pay less in taxes and 23 percent did not anticipate their tax payment will be altered. 

A third of the respondents polled said the new legislation made them more likely to cast a ballot for a Democrat, while a quarter of those surveyed said the same for a Republican. 

GOP lawmakers have commended companies like Walmart for announcing bonuses or additional employee benefits due to the tax law’s passage late last year. Democrats have slammed the legislation, which President Trump signed into law before the New Year, as a tax cut for the wealthy.

Oh yes, the bonuses. About that...

Courtesy of Vice:

Consider the one-time, $1,000 bonuses for employees that many companies, like Comcast and AT&T, have announced. First of all, one-time bonuses, while nice to have, are not wage increases. The promise of the tax cut was not that it would let companies throw a few bucks in the employee tip jar, but permanently raise pay. Bonuses don’t make up for stagnant wages, as Southwest Airlines’ mechanics union, which has been locked in a contract battle for over five years, told the company. 

The Comcast and AT&T bonuses were also announced late last year, allowing them to be written off as a business expense in 2017. If a business gave a bonus in 2017, it went against the 35 percent corporate tax rate then in effect. If were to give one this year, the bonus would only go against the new 21 percent rate. In other words, it was cheaper for businesses to announce bonuses in December than January, suggesting we may not see much of their kind again. 

But Comcast and AT&T in particular serve as the poster children for dishonesty in this matter. Because around the same time that they made a big show of rewarding employees with bonuses, both companies quietly engaged in layoffs. Comcast fired 500 members of its sales department before Christmas, and AT&T is eliminating “thousands” of jobs, according to its union, the Communications Workers of America. “We believe there's more than 4,000 people AT&T has (notified of layoffs) across the country,” Larry Robbins, vice president of CWA Local 4900, told the Indianapolis Daily Star.

Just to do the math on this, $1,000 bonuses to 200,000 AT&T workers is $200 million. Cancelling 4,000 jobs at the median US compensation of $59,000 per year (some of the workers affected likely earned less) would actually amount to a higher number, and unlike the bonuses, those layoffs are permanent. More to the point, any $1,000 bonus for workers is a drop in the ocean compared to chopping the corporate tax rate by 40 percent, as the Trump tax cuts will. AT&T, according to calculations from economist Dean Baker, will see $2.4 billion in annual savings from that tax cut, more than ten times the likely cost of its the one-time bonus. (Neither Comcast nor AT&T immediately responded to a request for comment.)

Also keep in mind that as Wal-Mart handed out bonuses, and promised a wage increase, they also suddenly closed Sam's Clubs all over the country, including every single one up here in Alaska.

Donald Trump is going to lie about all of this during his State of the Union speech, which is yet another reason I will most likely be watching Netflix instead.

Donald Trump seems to believe that the GOP tax bill has killed Obamacare. It hasn't.

Pres. Trump on repeal of individual mandate in tax bill: "When the individual mandate is being repealed, that means Obamacare is being repealed...Obamacare has been repealed in this bill." https://t.co/8qXJjj5j9V pic.twitter.com/ThnXHuECJS

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) December 20, 2017

Courtesy of New York Magazine:  

Almost none of this is true. Indeed, it reveals the opposite. Trump recognizes that he has no chance to repeal Obamacare, so he is instead pretending to have killed the law that his base loathes (but which the country as a whole likes quite a bit). 

Most of Obamacare remains in place. That includes such things as reforms that have helped hold down medical inflation, the expansion of Medicaid to cover the poor, subsidies for individuals to buy insurance, and regulations to prevent insurers from cherry-picking the healthy and excluding the sick. “When the individual mandate is being repealed, that means Obamacare is being repealed. Because they get their money from the individual mandate,” Trump “explains.” 

It is possible he thinks this is true. It isn’t. The law is primarily financed by other taxes. It is correct that repealing the individual mandate will impair the effectiveness of the marketplaces that sell insurance to people who can’t get coverage through their employer. That will make premiums more expensive, and possibly drive insurers out of some markets. States that want to have a highly functioning marketplace will be able to impose a state-level mandate, though, an outcome that could make insurance cheaper in blue states than red ones.

My favorite part of this is how smugly self satisfied Trump looks as he spews his bullshit.

However believe it or not this is not the most awkward statement made by Republicans after they passed the GOP tax bill.

Beating him out by a mile was Orrin Hatch's oral gratification of Donald Trump right out in public.

Here's the transcript of Sen. Orrin Hatch's effusive speech about Trump: pic.twitter.com/fVda0dLoGL

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) December 20, 2017

Damn, that is hard to read.

But still that has NOTHING on Mike Pence who essentially prayed at the altar of Donald Trump. 

Good Lord, you need to watch this. After Ben Carson's Prayer, Mike Pence actually delivered a prayer of thanks to Trump. Must watch. pic.twitter.com/sAq9OQnQT9

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) December 20, 2017

"You shall have no other gods before Me."

"You shall not worship false idols."

I can't remember where I read it, but it seemed important.

Perhaps Mike Pence needs to go back to church and get a little Biblical tune up. 

Under the cover of darkness the Republicans pass massive tax overhaul.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

The Senate passed the most sweeping tax rewrite in decades early Saturday, with Republicans lining up to approve an overhaul that will touch almost every corner of the United States economy, affecting families, small business owners and multinational corporations, with the biggest benefits flowing to the highest-earning Americans. 

Senators voted 51-49, as Republicans approved the nearly 500-page bill in the early morning hours after lawmakers received a rewritten version, which contained significant changes from the original bill that passed two Senate panels last month along party lines. The last-minute revisions prompted an outcry from Democrats, who said it was impossible — and irresponsible — for lawmakers to read and digest a significant piece of legislation in such a short period of time. 

Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader and Kentucky Republican, called it “a great day for the country.” 

The president praised Republican lawmakers on Saturday morning on Twitter, saying, “Biggest Tax Bill and Tax Cuts in history just passed in the Senate. Now these great Republicans will be going for final passage. Thank you to House and Senate Republicans for your hard work and commitment!”

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin, said in a statement that with Senate approval “we will move quickly to a conference committee so we can get a final bill to President Trump’s desk.”

But, speaking on the Senate floor ahead of the vote, Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, called the Republican approach “a process and a product that no one can be proud of and everyone should be ashamed of.”

As explained by Senator Jon Tester last night, this bill was handed to the Democrats with only a handful of hours before the vote, and with revisions being added almost up until the last minute.

I was just handed a 479-page tax bill a few hours before the vote. One page literally has hand scribbled policy changes on it that can’t be read. This is Washington, D.C. at its worst. Montanans deserve so much better. pic.twitter.com/q6lTpXoXS0

— Senator Jon Tester (@SenatorTester) December 2, 2017

Many of those revisions contained sweetheart deals for Senators who were previous hold outs like Susan Collins:  

Several amendments that Collins offered were incorporated into the bill, including the restoration of a $10,000 deduction for property taxes and a lower threshold for deducting medical expenses. 

Collins touted the ability for her to get changes into the bill as crucial to her decision to ultimately be able to support it.

And Lisa Murkowski:  

Senate Republicans passed legislation early Saturday allowing oil and gas drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as part of a tax reform package, moving closer to fulfilling a long-time GOP goal. 

The passage of the bill marked a significant achievement for Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, the chairwoman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who has introduced legislation to open a portion of the Alaskan refuge to drilling every term she has served in the chamber, only to be blocked by Democrats. 

“This small package offers a tremendous opportunity for Alaska, for the Gulf Coast, and for all of our nation,” Murkowski said before the vote. “We have authorized responsible energy development in the 1002 area.” 

This has already received significant backlash from conversations groups: 

A major conservation group is blasting the newly passed Senate GOP tax bill for allowing oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), calling the bill “simply shameful.” 

“Opening the Arctic to drilling as part of this tax plan is simply shameful. The Arctic Refuge isn’t a bank—drilling there won’t pay for the tax cuts the Senate just passed,” National Audubon Society President and CEO David Yarnold said in a statement Saturday.

Actually it is not likely to bring in much money at all as the cost of new drilling is quite high in Alaska and with the price of oil plunging the risk to cost ratio may mean that few, if any, new wells are dug.

In the meantime the bill did repeal the Obamacare mandate which means that the healthcare of millions of Americans will likely be affected by the vote.

The editorial board of the New York Times called it an "Historic Tax Heist":

The bill is expected to add more than $1.4 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade, a debt that will be paid by the poor and middle class in future tax increases and spending cuts to Medicare, Social Security and other government programs. Its modest tax cuts for the middle class disappear after eight years. And up to 13 million people stand to lose their health insurance because the bill makes a big change to the Affordable Care Act. 

Yet Republicans somehow found a way to give a giant and permanent tax cut to corporations like Apple, General Electric and Goldman Sachs, saving those businesses tens of billions of dollars.

All in all it is a truly terrible bill, which is why the Republicans demanded that it be passed late last night, because they well knew that if the American people had the opportunity to really know what was in it that they would take to the streets with pitchforks and torches.