Big House victory for GOP tax plan, but Senate fate unclear
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Sometime next April, pregnant cows in the Porcupine Caribou Herd in Canada will take the lead in an annual migration of nearly 200,000 animals north to Alaska.
From winter grounds in Canada’s Yukon Territory, the caribou traveling in small and large groups will cross rivers and gaps in the mighty Brooks Range on the 400-mile (643-kilometer) journey. Their destination is the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a strip of flat tundra between the mountains and Arctic Ocean.
The plain provides food and a vantage point from which caribou can spot predators from far away. But beneath the lichens and cotton grass, there’s a hidden resource: crude oil.
Opening the coastal plain to petroleum drilling, with the hope for jobs and new oil for the transAlaska pipeline, has stood as a goal of every Alaska governor and the state’s members of Congress for three decades. And the opportunity is rising again in federal budget discussions.
Congressional Republicans are pushing for refuge drilling with a projected $1 billion from lease sales to help pay for President Donald Trump’s proposed tax cut. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday advanced the drilling measure. Chairwoman Lisa Murkowski, a Republican U.S. senator, says oil production later would bring in much more revenue.
Rival US and Russian resolutions defeated on Syria weapons
UNITED NATIONS — Rival U.S. and Russian resolutions to extend the mandate of experts trying to determine who was responsible for chemical attacks in Syria were defeated Thursday at a heated Security Council meeting that reflected the deteriorating relations between Washington and Moscow.
The result of the two votes means that the expert body — the Joint Investigative Mechanism known as the JIM — will cease operations when its current mandate expires at midnight Thursday.
The U.S., its allies and human rights groups called it a serious blow to efforts to hold accountable those responsible for carrying out chemical weapons attacks in Syria.
During a three-hour drama, Russia first vetoed the U.S. draft resolution which was supported by 11 of the 15 Security Council members. Bolivia joined Russia in voting “no” and China and Egypt abstained.
Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia withdrew the Russian resolution over Moscow’s insistence that it be voted on second not first as required under council rules. But using another council rule, Bolivia then resubmitted and called for a vote on that resolution.
Killer Charles Manson alive as reports swirl of ill health
LOS ANGELES — For nearly 50 years Charles Manson has been the living personification of evil, a demonic presence captured in scores of photos, each of them marked by his piercing dark eyes and the crude Nazi swastika he carved into his forehead.
That personification returned to the public consciousness again this week, complete with a prison mug shot of a now-elderly but still evil-looking Manson, after a report by TMZ.com that the killer of glamorous actress Sharon Tate and six others is seriously ill and hospitalized in Bakersfield, California.
The state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation declined to confirm that Thursday, saying only that Manson, who turned 83 on Sunday, is still alive. To reveal more, spokeswoman Vicky Waters told The Associated Press, would violate federal and state privacy laws.
Serial murderers before and after have killed far more than Manson. Fiftyone years ago a former Marine named Charles Whitman climbed to the observation deck of a tower at the University of Texas and opened fire on dozens of people, killing 11, after killing five before reaching the deck. Just last month, Stephen Paddock fired down from a hotel window on a Las Vegas concert, killing 58.
But like Whitman’s, Paddock’s name if not his deed seems destined to be largely forgotten. Not so with Manson.
WASHINGTON — Republicans rammed a $1.5 trillion overhaul of business and personal income taxes through the House Thursday, edging toward the code’s biggest rewrite in three decades and the first major legislative triumph for President Donald Trump and the GOP after 10 bumpy months of controlling government.
The mostly party-line 227-205 vote masked more ominous problems in the Senate. There, a similar package received a politically awkward verdict from nonpartisan congressional analysts showing it would eventually produce higher taxes for low- and middle-income earners but deliver deep reductions for those better off.
The Senate bill was approved late Thursday by the Finance Committee and sent to the full Senate on a partyline 14-12 vote. Like the House measure, it would slash the corporate tax rate and reduce personal income tax rates for many.
But it adds a key feature not in the House version: repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that everyone in the U.S. have health insurance. Elimination of the so-called individual mandate would add an estimated $338 billion in revenue over 10 years that the Senate tax-writers used for other tax cuts.
The Senate panel’s vote came at the end of four days of often fierce partisan debate. It turned angrily personal for Chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch, RUtah, as he railed against Democrats’ accusations that the legislation was crafted to favor big corporations and the wealthy.
“I come from the poor people. And I’ve been working my whole stinking career for people who don’t have a chance,” Hatch insisted.
After the panel’s approval, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared, “For the millions of hard-working Americans who need more money in their pockets and the chance of a better future, help is on the way.”
The analysts’ problematic projections for the Senate bill came a day after Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson became the first GOP senator to state opposition to the measure, saying it didn’t cut levies enough for millions of partnerships and corporations. With at least five other Republican senators yet to declare support, the bill’s fate is far from certain in a chamber the GOP controls by just 52-48.
Even so, Republicans are hoping to send a compromise bill for Trump to sign by Christmas.
“Now the ball is in the Senate’s court,” Vice President Mike Pence urged after the House vote.
Speaking at a conservative Tax Foundation dinner in Washington, Pence said, “The next few weeks are going to be vitally important and they’re going to be a challenge.” But he added, “we’re going to get it done” before the end of the year.
An earlier White House statement that “now is the time to deliver” also underscored the Republican Party’s effort to maintain momentum and outrace critics. Those include the AARP lobby for older people, major medical organizations, Realtors — and, in all likelihood, every Senate Democrat.
With this summer’s crash of the GOP effort to dismantle President Barack Obama’s health care law, Republicans see a successful tax effort as the best way to avert major losses in next year’s congressional elections. House Republicans conceded they are watching the Senate warily.
“Political survival depends on us doing this,” said Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D. “One of the things that scares me a little bit is that they’re going to screw up the bill to the point we can’t pass it.”
The House plan and the Senate Finance bill would deliver the bulk of their tax reductions to businesses.
Each would cut the 35 percent corporate tax rate to 20 percent, while reducing personal rates for many taxpayers and erasing or shrinking deductions. Projected federal deficits would grow by $1.5 trillion over 10 years.
As decades of Republicans have done before them, GOP lawmakers touted their tax cuts as a boon to families across all income lines and a boost for businesses, jobs and the entire country.
“Passing this bill is the single biggest thing we can do to grow the economy, to restore opportunity and help those middle income families who are struggling,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin.
Democrats said the measure would disproportionately help the wealthy and mean tax increases for millions. Among other things, the House legislation would reduce and ultimately repeal the tax Americans pay on the largest inheritances, while the Senate would limit that levy to fewer estates.
The bill is “pillaging the middle class to pad the pockets of the wealthiest and hand tax breaks to corporations shipping jobs out of America,” declared House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.
Thirteen House Republicans — all but one from high-tax California, New York and New Jersey — voted “no” because the plan would erase tax deductions for state and local income and sales taxes and limit property tax deductions to $10,000. Defectors included House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-N.J., who said the measure would “hurt New Jersey families.”
Trump traveled to the Capitol before the vote to give House Republicans a pep talk.
Besides Johnson, Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona, Bob Corker of Tennessee and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have yet to commit to backing the tax measure.