You have chunks of the explanation in other responses, let's try to put them together:
Since Obama became president, all legislation basically needs 2/3rds of the senate to pass if it's remotely controversial and every tax change is controversial. There is one exception though: if the bill is of a budgetary nature, and is revenue neutral over 10 years.
Trump really wanted to pass some tax cuts in 2017. But as you'd expect, claiming that a big tax cut is revenue neutral is far more than the senate parlamentarian would believe. So instead, some tax cuts are made temporary, and some tax changes are made that would gain revenue. Then the whole thing appears to be revenue neutral over a decade, because nobody expects that the poison pills at the end will actually be allowed to happen. They tend to come in 6+ years later, as to make sure that all senators and the president might also claim said increases are not their problem.
So the expectation is that a future congress will just undo those tax changes, and push them further into the future, by again making another bill that looks revenue neutral in the long run, but is just kicking the ball down the road.
The congress since the midterms, however, is even less functional than in the Obama or Trump years: So the poison pills that are not supposed to happen are starting to happen. Other cuts that occurred, like the increase of the standard deduction, were also marked as temporary, and could come back if congress doesn't do anything.
So ultimately it's all side-effects of people trying to bypass congressional rules, because otherwise we'd not see anything other than emergency spending bills passing in congress. Changes to legislation that would make this kind of dysfunction stop happening are even harder to pass. Every incentive pushes politicians of all parties to play with fire. This time we got burned.
jemmyw
It's pretty insane. How is the US going to get back to having a functional government? One side or the other needs to win a significant majority or the two sides need to start working together. I can't really see either happening.
muzz
> Since Obama became president, all legislation basically needs 2/3rds of the senate to pass if it's remotely controversial and every tax change is controversial.
This is an odd way to mention (abuse of) the filibuster
Since Obama became president, all legislation basically needs 2/3rds of the senate to pass if it's remotely controversial and every tax change is controversial. There is one exception though: if the bill is of a budgetary nature, and is revenue neutral over 10 years.
Trump really wanted to pass some tax cuts in 2017. But as you'd expect, claiming that a big tax cut is revenue neutral is far more than the senate parlamentarian would believe. So instead, some tax cuts are made temporary, and some tax changes are made that would gain revenue. Then the whole thing appears to be revenue neutral over a decade, because nobody expects that the poison pills at the end will actually be allowed to happen. They tend to come in 6+ years later, as to make sure that all senators and the president might also claim said increases are not their problem.
So the expectation is that a future congress will just undo those tax changes, and push them further into the future, by again making another bill that looks revenue neutral in the long run, but is just kicking the ball down the road.
The congress since the midterms, however, is even less functional than in the Obama or Trump years: So the poison pills that are not supposed to happen are starting to happen. Other cuts that occurred, like the increase of the standard deduction, were also marked as temporary, and could come back if congress doesn't do anything.
So ultimately it's all side-effects of people trying to bypass congressional rules, because otherwise we'd not see anything other than emergency spending bills passing in congress. Changes to legislation that would make this kind of dysfunction stop happening are even harder to pass. Every incentive pushes politicians of all parties to play with fire. This time we got burned.