No they didn’t. The question is, why didn’t they revert to their pre-cut level? And the answer is…
So he never made a cut. Look, you can try to spin it all you want. The rate was X, he kept it X and it never went lower. Lower = cut.
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I’m not spinning anything. The truth is:
–If Obama doesn’t sign bill, tax rate is Y (which is >X)
–If Obama signs bill, tax rate is X
Obama signed the bill. Tax rate was lower than it would have been. Like you said, lower = cut. Ergo, Obama cut taxes.
Yeah and there is a “ghost man” on second.
Look man, you owe me $850 a month rent. It goes up to $900 at the end of the lease. The lease ends and I tell you, “you know what, your rent is going to stay $850 for the next year.” Now did I cut your rent? No. I stopped an increase. But that is not a cut. A cut would be making your rent $825.
edit: Really this thread has been hijacked again. Sorry @Mufasa, we need to start making our own threads.
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That’s not a legit analogy.
You’re a tenant in a building I own. The last landlord (the guy before me) charged you $1K/month rent, a rate you paid for many years. You fell on hard times, and he agreed to cut it to $900/month for one year. You and he signed a deal stating that your rent would go back up to $1K exactly one year later.
I buy the building, so I’m the landlord now. A year passes, so it’s time for the rent, per the agreement you signed with the previous landlord, to return to its normal and customary level of $1K. Instead, I say ‘I tell you what–I’m going to leave it at $900.’ Question: Are you going to thank me for cutting the rent, or grouse because I didn’t cut it ANOTHER hundred bucks?
Still not a cut in that scenario, it’s stopping an increase. Your love of baseline budgets would make you an amazing government bureaucrat.
OK, just for that, I’m kicking you out. Pack your things; I’m changing the locks. 
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I googled “ted cruz dominionist theology” and found articles supporting both of us. Make of that what you will.
OK. This is Karl Rove in an WSJ Op Ed this morning. Long block of text because it’s paywalled.
To my fellow Conservative/ Libertarians/ Republicans here - What are your thoughts?
Bad Excuses for Republican Fratricide - WSJ
There’s no way to justify killing the GOP health-care bill, but some are trying hard.
It has become a tired, familiar act. Members of the House Freedom Caucus say they are the only true conservatives, while other congressional Republicans are RINOs, “Republicans in Name Only.” In the latest episode, the Freedom Caucus and its outside allies—including Heritage Action and FreedomWorks—denounced the GOP health-care bill as “ObamaCare Lite.”
The Republican plan “not only accepts the flawed progressive premises of ObamaCare but expands upon them,” thundered Heritage Action’s CEO, Mike Needham. Americans, he added, “will notice no significant difference” between the GOP bill and the Affordable Care Act.
The Freedom Caucus’s vice chairman, Rep. Jim Jordan, sang the same tune. “It’s ObamaCare in a different form,” he said. The caucus’s chairman, Rep. Mark Meadows, wrote an op-ed with Sen. Rand Paul calling it “ObamaCare provisions dressed up in shiny new GOP-branded clothes.”
These claims confused the grass roots but were simply untrue. Look at the legislation’s text, which canceled ObamaCare’s insurance exchanges, halted and reversed its Medicaid expansion, killed its taxes, and whacked its individual and employer mandates.
Or look at the changes that Messrs. Meadows, Jordan & Co. asked for when negotiating with the White House. They wanted to permit states to receive Medicaid funding on either a per capita basis or through a traditional block grant. They wanted to allow work requirements on able-bodied, single Medicaid recipients. They wanted to prohibit additional states from expanding Medicaid while ObamaCare was phased out. They wanted flexibility on which “essential benefits” must be included in every insurance policy.
These are good changes, but they hardly justify denouncing the bill as “ObamaCare Lite.” That falsehood was meant to increase the Freedom Caucus’s leverage and pump up its allies’ fundraising—both at the expense of other Republicans.
As President Trump agreed to each amendment, the Freedom Caucus asked for another. By the end, some demanded that insurers be allowed to deny coverage for pre-existing conditions. Others wanted to allow insurers to set lifetime limits on payouts for sick policy holders or kick 26-year-olds off the family coverage. These weren’t essential conservative reforms but pretexts for opposing the plan.
After the bill was withdrawn, the Freedom Caucus tried frantically to justify its opposition, with Rep. David Brat writing an op-ed complaining that the proposal had “included premium increases of 15 to 20% until 2020.”
But premiums will keep rising until ObamaCare’s exchanges wind down, because they attract too few young, healthy people and too many old, unhealthy and expensive ones. Under the GOP repeal bill last year, which Messrs. Meadows, Jordan and Brat supported, premiums also would have risen as the exchanges closed up shop.
Freedom Caucusers could avoid these premium increases by killing the exchanges immediately—thereby canceling insurance for 10 million people overnight—or by increasing subsidies to hold policyholders harmless. Only this year’s Republican proposal was scored by the CBO as lowering premiums, starting in 2021.
Equally laughable was Mr. Brat’s assertion that “conservative members were left out of the drafting of the bill.” Mr. Brat is not on the committees of jurisdiction. But all the Freedom Caucus members who are, first helped write the bill, then voted for it in committee.
When Fox’s Chris Wallace prodded Mr. Jordan last Sunday over wanting to “remove the protection for people with pre-existing conditions,” the Ohio congressman protested that was “not accurate” because he was only opposing “guaranteed issue.” Memo to Mr. Jordan: That’s the term for assuring that people with pre-existing conditions are not denied insurance.
Mr. Needham now suggests the GOP “bring the bill back” with added language to repeal “community rating requirements preventing insurers from charging lower premiums for younger, healthier consumers.” Note to Mr. Needham: Next time, read the bill first. Subtitle D, Section 135 already did that, relaxing the standard to its traditional 5-to-1 ratio and allowing states to go without a standard altogether.
Similarly, Mr. Meadows told ABC on Sunday that “conversations over the last 48 hours are really about how we come together in the Republican conference and try to get this over the finish line.” But other Republicans don’t see the Freedom Caucus as helpful in getting anything important over any finish line.
The only lines crossed during this debacle were breached by the Freedom Caucusers, who committed political libel against their Republican colleagues, stopped the legislative process dead in its tracks, and saved ObamaCare. Congratulations.
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If they were Generals they would march their army off of a cliff and declare victory for not losing to “them”.
They- The Freedom Caucus, are idiots.
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The GOP created the Frankenstein’s monster that is the FC. Now they can’t control it.
Or put another way: Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.
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I feel like this describes the entire Trump movement.
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So, Trumpcare was the best republican’s could do?? The last 8 years we heard nothing from the republicans but “we will repeal obamacare” and it looks like the only one’s who want to see that truly happen, is in fact, the Freedom Caucus. However you feel about them, they saved us from a shit healthcare plan. Nothing about Trumpcare was conservative so why compromise your beliefs(and promises to your voters) and let it pass?
I’m so tired of this nonsense of “pass this bill because it’s the best we can do” or “you’re saving Obamacare.” No, how about you fucking keep your promises and make a better bill. Start by straight up repealing OC and open up the markets for competition.
This simply isn’t true. Trumpcare left the pre-existing conditions mandate and also implements a 30 percent surcharge on those who decide they no longer want to have insurance so basically, getting rid of the individual and employee mandate is meaningless. Trumpcare’s tax credits would create a new entitlement program. The PP defund was for a whopping 1 year. Illegals would have easier screening and access to TC than under OC. . Ya,great fucking work republicans. This was a complete disaster.
Also, my idea of governing is let people run their own lives. (Here come the broad statement police.)
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This is the exact message I love seeing out of people. Dems and repubs alike have far too easy of a time justifying voting the party line and blindly backing anything their POTUS says is a good idea.
Independent thought and judging things on a case by case basis is the only REAL way to make this country better. If nothing else, the entire Trump movement has really helped the average American of being willing to be critical of their own party.
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This is a downright awful idea. How would it help the GOP to burn so many people and companies? Healthcare is a HUGE (dare I say yuuuuge) industry. Pulling the rug out from under it would be setting it up for a crash.
Was the HC industry in danger of a crash prior to the ACA’s introduction? If not, then why would a 1 line bill “we repeal the ACA and re-activate any legislation that was in operation prior to its passage” not work?
Because we are not pre-ACA. Things changed. People signed up for the insurance. Companies adjusted.
Undoing all of that in one swoop would be a disaster. It would eventually recover, but the transition would be a mess that the GOP would own.
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I think the general argument is that all of the work these HC companies have done to prepare/work in the new legal system would cause huge ripple effects if you remove the laws all at once. You suddenly see a huge wave of firings as jobs become obsolete, and a large impact to the overall industry.
Edit: nvm Drew beat me to it
It would work, if you don’t mind suddenly and unceremoniously throwing millions of people–untold numbers of whom are in the midst of lifesaving cancer chemo, or have cancer or other surgery scheduled for tomorrow, or are children at risk of dying from various ailments–out of the healthcare system.
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This was specifically in the context of the collapse of the industry. You can also have a second line “This will not operate retrospectively on any treatment courses currently being received.”
Mind you, I appreciate that this would have nasty repercussions.