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If correct, this is a good thing on a generally bad, overstuffed bill. Immediate expensing never should have been changed in the first place, and it was always
by tomrod 1y ago
If correct, this is a good thing on a generally bad, overstuffed bill. Immediate expensing never should have been changed in the first place, and it was always weird seeing people twist themselves in knots defending it.
- xp84 1y agoIt’s an overstuffed bill because nobody will compromise on anything so the only way to pass a bill that has anything even remotely controversial to either party is one reconciliation bill a year.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> It’s an overstuffed bill because nobody will compromise on anything so the only way to pass a bill that has anything even remotely controversial to either party is one reconciliation bill a year. No, and lots of controversial bills have passed other than as reconciliation bills, and especially so during trifectas where they "controversial" within the minority party but broadly supported by the majority; reconciliation is necessary to pass something that strains unity in the majority party and is uniformly opposed by (not "controversial to") the minority party, perhaps.
- cheriot 1y agoIn the last 10 years, have there been more than a handful of bills that got 60 votes in the senate? I wouldn't like what the current congress would do without the filibuster, but at this point a paralyzed system might be worse.
- apsec112 1y ago"Despite Democrats holding thin majorities in both chambers during a period of intense political polarization, the 117th Congress (2021-2023) oversaw the passage of numerous significant bills, including the Inflation Reduction Act, American Rescue Plan Act, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Postal Service Reform Act, Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, CHIPS and Science Act, Honoring Our PACT Act, Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, and Respect for Marriage Act." All of these except the first two were bipartisan and got 60 Senate votes (or more)
- 9283409232 1y ago[flagged]
- tomrod 1y ago[flagged]
- bongodongobob 1y ago[flagged]
- DaSHacka 1y ago[flagged]
- 9283409232 1y ago[flagged]
- evan_ 1y ago“Thought terminating cliche” has become a thought terminating cliche.
- nandomrumber 1y ago[flagged]
- bmacho 1y agoSome billion times more than any of the listed sayings in the wiki page.
- bmacho 1y agoThreads being over is a good thing, isn't it? Truth's been discovered, all parties agree, no more time spent on going in circles, can move on to do other, meaningful things, etc. Unless you are facebook, and you optimize on endless churn, stealing time and showing ads. I haven't seen the original comment, but the wiki article is moronic. None of the listed example seems even bad to me, claiming that they are the devil is ridiculous. Maybe even a false flag. The only one that actually has anything to do with "terminating cliche" is "Let's agree to disagree.". But that's just the common phrase you say after you've decided to opt out of an argument. It is not (and can't be) the cause of it, it is the consequence of it.* And it is by no means any bad, or should one avoid it. * : something something people being able to easily leave an argument makes them do it more. But it would need a lot of stretch to argue that the possibility to go away from arguments is a net negative for humanity edit: can we agree that the random shit you linked is 100% unrelated to the argument at hand, therefore/and definitely should not be used? edit2: yeah, it assumes the truthness of some ridiculously nonsensical concepts, and uses them in a meta meta way, that is 2-3 steps away from the topic at hand. Much-much more annoying than anything listed. "This is the hill you want to die on, huh? Naah.. How about.." *points downwards* "..there is this hill there 14000 miles away (actually there is only ocean), how about we move this fight there?" Yeah no thx.
- 9283409232 1y agoThe answer is to vote out politicians. Getting ranked choice voting on your states ballot would go a long way to fixing this. They would not have Mamdani on the ballot for NY mayor if it wasn't for ranked choice voting. Certain politicans know this and have made RCV illegal in their state. Get RCV on the ballot for your state.
- mindslight 1y agoRCV / Ranked Pairs of course. The IRV decision process is still a relic of the two party system, with the possibility for some pretty terrible strategic-voting dynamics as votes diverge from just two major parties.
- dragonwriter 1y agoRCV is another name for IRV, it is not a generic name for the use of ranked ballots.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- boroboro4 1y agoNot important but Mamdani would’ve won without ranked choice voting too, it didn’t play a role in the end.
- tialaramex 1y agoWe can't know. Ranked choice changes how people vote. In particular it gives people permission to vote for a candidate they like but don't expect to be able to win.
- AnthonyMouse 1y agoScore voting (or STAR) is better.
- 9283409232 1y ago
- a_wild_dandan 1y agoWhat does that matter? We're talking trifectas here, not supermajorities. The filibuster is a cute remnant of "decorum." It's a vestigial rule which will disappear when too inconvenient. (Fun question with not-so-fun answers: why isn't the filibuster gone already?)
- ethbr1 1y ago> (Fun question with not-so-fun answers: why isn't the filibuster gone already?) Because both parties are scared eventually the other party will be back in the majority.
- actionfromafar 1y agoSo it seems like a good canary? If it’s removed, the ruling party is no longer afraid it will be ever removed from power.
- int_19h 1y agoI don't think Republicans need to worry about Dems retaking the Senate anytime soon.
- ethbr1 1y agoHistory says that would be a dumb bet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_States_Congresses#/media/File:Combined--Control_of_the_U.S._House_of_Representatives_-_Control_of_the_U.S._Senate.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_Stat... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/40th_United_States_Congress#Party_summary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/40th_United_States_Congress#... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/74th_United_States_Congress#Party_summary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/74th_United_States_Congress#... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/76th_United_States_Congress#Party_summary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/76th_United_States_Congress#... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/89th_United_States_Congress#Party_summary https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/89th_United_States_Congress#...
- 1y ago
- margalabargala 1y agoAbsolutely. Many bills in the Senate in that time have gotten over 90. Here's one that passed 95-2 that I picked at random. https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/870/actions https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/870... A lot of what happens in Congress is obvious to do and everyone agrees. While the media certainly focuses on the handful of things the two parties are at odds over, most of the lawmaking done by Congress is not controversial between parties, and is simply passed, so we don't hear about it.
- sugarpimpdorsey 1y agoThe last time something like that happened was probably the Patriot Act.
- Calavar 1y agoThe 2024 Ukraine defense funding bill passed despite having < 50% support in the majority party in the House, and it was not part of a reconciliation.
- rpiguy 1y agoAffordable Care Act (Obamacare) was the most sweeping legislation ever passed via reconciliation.
- apsec112 1y agoObamacare was passed via regular order (60 Senate votes), not reconciliation. There was a follow-up package to tweak it that passed via reconciliation in 2010, but the original bill was regular order. It's the only (very brief) window where one party has held 60 Senate seats since 1977.
- rpiguy 1y agoWhoops! I remembered the reconciliation but not the initial vote.
- pfannkuchen 1y agoIt seems like a more formalized quid pro quo system is needed so that political favors can be split across bills and relied upon. This sort of thing seems to be human nature, it doesn’t help anyone to pretend in the procedural rules that it doesn’t happen.
- disgruntledphd2 1y agoThis was called pork when it used to happen and people were very angry about it.
- pfannkuchen 1y agoPork wasn’t formalized, though, was it? Though I agree that favors did seem to be more separated across bills in the past. This is an interesting manifestation of congress becoming a lower trust system, I suppose.
- onlyrealcuzzo 1y agoWhich is why we need to get rid of reconciliation and go back to actually needing to get compromise, but hell will freeze over twice before that happens.
- earth2mars 1y agoThis. TCJA removed it and OBBBA restored it. What am I missing here
- lesuorac 1y agoIt lets you claim BBB doesn't increase the budget by as much as it'll ultimately do. By having a bunch of random provision in BBB that generate revenue it lowers it's impact on the defect and then you can repeal them later on after passing BBB.
- rhinoceraptor 1y agoClassic 45-47 maneuver, first create a problem. Then solve it, often poorly and incompletely. Finally, claim victory, another 300 IQ 5D chess move in the books.
- FireBeyond 1y agoOr set a little timing booby trap. Like in this, "We're going to cut Medicaid, but only after the midterms, so if you start screaming about it, we'll blame the Dems for it."
- mindslight 1y agoTwisting not required. Depreciation straightforwardly applies to every other business capital expenditure. Hire someone to put a new roof on a rental property, and you're out the tens of thousands of dollars cash while only getting an immediate deduction for one thirtieth of the value. If you were expecting to pay that cash out of income, it's effectively a realized income and then reinvestment. The recent (-ly undone) change went against decades of how things were, was crippling for medium size cashflow-positive startups, effectively increased taxes, etc. But it was really just a straightforward application of the general principles that apply to most everything else.
- djoldman 1y ago? This applied to salaries, it wasn't a capital expenditure as "capital expenditure" has traditionally been defined. This was an operational expense.
- mindslight 1y agoYes, salaries spent to build a capital asset. Half the cost of a new roof is paying salaries, right? And yet, you still depreciate the whole value of the completed thing, not just the cost of the input materials. If you hire the roofers yourself as employees, you're still supposed to be accounting this way - although obviously there are many ways to fudge it. The point is that building a piece of software that is going to be in use for several+ years is creating an asset. It just goes against our intuition since this industry is so driven by fast fashion, and the bookkeeping of specific components, their depreciation schedules, early end of life, (etc) seems like needless complexity.
- creato 1y agoAt least 50% of time on every software team I've ever been on was spent on maintenance and fixing bugs. You can expense such time as opex, but it has to be justified, and that's often difficult to do. Did you fix a bug by refactoring some code to avoid the problem? Is that capex or opex? Can you convince the IRS of such? The old (and now new) rules eliminated this accounting game and uncertainty.
- tossandthrow 1y ago> Immediate expensing never should have been changed in the first place This is indicative of ignorance. There is a reason why we have these rules.
- tomrod 1y agoPlease expound
- tossandthrow 1y agoOfcause. Fundamentally there are reasons why we don't allow companies to funnel all operational profits into capital assets without them paying taxes. An analogy would be a company that used all their profits to extract gold from the ground such that they get the labor worth of gold out. In doing so they would effeciently dodge paying taxes of their profits. Now back to your comment: you portray it is as only good that this law was changes . And in doing so you leave out these details that essentially leads to instantiating laws like these.
- rsync 1y agoYour analogy suggests a deferment of taxes paid but not elimination. In your example, they still own all the gold and would eventually pay taxes on any liquidation. I bring this up because I, too, am as interested in your parent to know the original inspiration for these parts of the tax code… Further: I have a suspicion that this should be applied differently to C-corps vs. pass through entities in the same way that corporate taxes and retained earnings are…
- tossandthrow 1y agoThe depends on how you implement it. You could also just don't allow to deduct taxes on the work out into digging out the gold. In the end I do not care. But i feel like people would be equally ignorant if it was proposed to tax the software in other ways (eg VAT on the derived services from operating). Regardless, these are the discussions to have.
- lazyeye 1y agoMaybe for every other item in the bill there is a another group of people out there who also think that "that is a good thing on a generally bad, overstuffed bill".