Things are trending upwards for the Dems. Economy is stronger than expected, gas prices are going down, and Biden just passed a big bill that only reduces the budget deficit while helping out majority of Americans, no matter how many lies/spin the Republicans come up with. Abortion is not a winning issue for Republicans, as seen in the Kansas elections. They don't want to bring this up because that will only help Democratic turnout in November.
they really have been trending up recently Dems basically blocked a Republican layup, then came back on the other end and hit a three…momentum is definitely rising
August tends to be a strong month. In the current environment, August needs to be a really strong month for Democrats to carry momentum. Right now the momentum is weak. Passing inflation bills and doing victories over lull energy prices is not going to carry through the volatility coming up late sept and oct. I dont think it matters much for whoever takes over the helm in the next couple years. If im a Democrat, I want to see a red wave. If not, Biden is going to take all of the blame. Which leads to a Trump/DeSantis victory.
Doubling the size of the IRS, raising taxes, and a bunch of green energy boondoggles in the middle of a recession and historically high inflation is the Dems just going all in knowing they are going to lose the House in a few months. One last power grab. almost identical to Obamacare in 2010
Another one bites the dust: Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler concedes primary defeat to Trump-endorsed challenger Joe Kent Six-term U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler conceded her loss to Donald Trump-endorsed challenger Joe Kent on Tuesday after new vote totals confirmed she would place third in the primary. Kent will face Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in November. She placed first in the primary with about 31% of the vote. Herrera Beutler, R-Battle Ground, led Kent on election night, but by Friday her lead had shrunk to 257 votes. That vanished Monday as Kent took a 960-vote lead on the strength of new counts in Clark, Cowlitz and Thurston counties.
Uhh.. that's the nature of tax auditing? Auditing plebs like us is mostly automated as our audits are relatively simple. Auditing manpower is mainly for those with more complex audits which are going to be wealthy people with assets distributed through various means. When conservatives b**** about wanting to defund the IRS, they don't give a **** about less audits for regular people. Because those audits will happen regardless of manpower due to again what I stated above. Less funding for the IRS disproportionately affects audits for the wealthy.
Democrats now have a slim chance after the court handed them a life line, but it will still be hard for them to win.
We now have two special elections in the House (NE-1 and MN-1) where the Republican performed around 6 points worse than Trump did in 2020 (plus the Kansas referendum). In both cases, suburban/city turnout was substantially higher than normal and continues to trend towards the Democrats (even relative to 2020). Republicans are still growing their vote share in rural areas but the turnout differential will be important to watch. There was a fear of some temporary suburban reversion due to the economy but I think Dobbs ruling mightve screwed that up for the Republicans. The Republicans are still largely favored but so far the specials (and the Kansas referendum) aren't pointing to the wipeout that we thought was going to happen. But this does mean that the Senate is very much in play and Dems might have a better outcome downballot in state elections.
On top of that a lot of the new manpower will go towards customer service when one of those automated things messes up, which currently right now at the IRS is a problem. You may actually be able to get someone on the line if you need to call to fix an error after this! The IRS has been desperately understaffed for a while. People buying into the scare tactics that this will somehow make things worse for non-rich people need to do even a modicum of research instead of turning the brain off and buying the "bUt TaXeS BaD" takes from Fox News or whatever conservative pundit they read. The employees hired to audit will be focused on the big fish but a lot of this is administrative And making sure rich people actually pay the same amount as us on this forum instead of exploiting loopholes that most of us will never have the privelege to use isn't a bad thing!
IRS has been helpful when we've called for my wife's business taxes, but getting someone is hard! They definitely need more manpower in customer service. Also, IRS is still running on freakin' COBOL? But, I really don't get the Republicans' problem with the IRS. They estimate the funding will increase revenue by $200 billion over 10 years. That's not $200 billion that they're going to get by shaking people upside down until the change falls out of their pockets. That's $200 billion your fellow Americans are stealing from us! Unless you're one of the thieves (and most people, including most Republicans, are not), why wouldn't you want to stop someone from stealing from you?
I filed taxes in Canada for the first time and the difference is pretty stark. I can generally reach someone at the CRA (Canadian equivalent to the IRS) within 20 minutes and even filing tax amendments and responding to audits can just be done online. I filed a huge moving deduction when I moved and the government just sent me a notice to my CRA account and I just scanned all my receipts and uploaded them to a case tied to my filing. I can even track available contribution room for my retirement account and TFSA (Canadian equivalent of the Roth IRA) in near real time on the CRA page as banks report my contributions back to the CRA every day so I can watch my available contribution room decrease. Even immigration processes like applying for a work permit are just done online. This is all pretty basic stuff but it shows you how dated the US is in terms of technology right now.
after wrong censoring the Hunter Biden laptop story as misinformation in the 2020 election, Twitter is censoring even harder for the midterms
