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Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

I find it fascinating that a tax plan proposed by a President reviled throughout the Valley is the one thing that finally convinced Apple to repatriate much of its overseas cash and invest it here in the US. They of course give no credit to him in this press release, but the proof is in the pudding. Of the many heavy handed ideas and efforts made by the previous administration to convince Apple to do this, exactly 0 of them worked.

Only time will tell whether the recent reduction in corporate tax rates will have a long-term net positive effect, but this move by Apple alone seems like a good sign that it will. If other US corporations follow suit with repatriation, the American economy will experience unprecedented corporate reinvestment.

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Nobody had to convince Apple or any other company to do anything. The repatriation is deemed, i.e no company has a choice in it. And while you may believe it was "proposed" by Trump, it has actually been in the works for years by both parties in Congress and by Obama [1]. They could just never pass a bill (because what else did you expect with Obama in the WH and Republicans in control of Congress) because Democrats wanted to spend it on infrastructure, and Republicans wanted to cut taxes for corporations, which is what they ended up doing. The repatriation of Apple's overseas cash would have happened regardless of who became President.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-budget-tax/obama-targ...

>The repatriation is deemed, i.e no company has a choice in it.

Incorrect. There is a repatriation tax holiday that enables them to pay lower rates than normal on repatriated cash. It is designed to encourage repatriation. They are not required to do so.

>Incorrect. There is a repatriation tax holiday designed to encourage repatriation. They are not required to do so.

Unfortunately, you're incorrect.

https://www.pwc.com/us/en/tax-services/publications/insights...

Unfortunately, that article is clear as mud and seems to use the word “mandatory” in its headline as editorialized clickbait. In its explanation:

“[The plan] uses the mechanics under subpart F to impose a one-time ‘toll charge’ on the undistributed, non-previously taxed post-1986 foreign E&P of certain US-owned foreign corporations as part of the transition to a new territorial regime. The toll charge is reduced by a deduction computed in a manner that ensures a 15.5-percent effective tax rate on ‘cash’ and an 8-percent effective tax rate to the extent the inclusion exceeds the cash position.”

There is nothing there indicating that people with guns were going to show up with guns and demand that Apple repatriate its cash. Once again, the bill was designed to encourage repatriation.

I'm not sure why you think a big 4 accounting firm would need to do clickbait, but that's beside the point. Whether Apple left the cash in Ireland or brought it back to the US, they would have paid $38B in taxes. That's the mandatory part. That's what the quoted text literally says.

And since you seem to be unaware, the vast majority of Apple's cash has already been in the US for years, invested in US treasuries and other fixed income assets and held by American trust banks. It's Irish cash only in a legal sense. This is broadly true for all other American multinationals as well.

The point is that the tax is mandatory, not the repatriation. If they didn’t believe that the US was the best place to put that money, they could have paid the tax and left it there or moved it elsewhere. The fact that they are deploying that capital here indicates some level of belief that the American economy will thrive under this tax plan.

This is pure fiction you've invented here.

Apple bringing capital back to the US is solely to do with their being tax incentives to do so.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

As you said, they are being incentivized to do so. It isn’t mandatory, which is what this whole argument is about. I don’t know how it’s “pure fiction” to point that out, when your own comment literally says what I have been saying.

> The fact that they are deploying that capital here indicates some level of belief that the American economy will thrive under this tax plan.

This statement is fiction. There is nothing from Apple indicating this.

They are indicating it by doing it. That cash doesn't have to remain here; they simply have to pay taxes on it. The only reason that a rational corporation would keep it here is because they believe it's a good investment.

Sorry you keep getting hassled for such a simple point.

The tax is being levied on all overseas money (mandatory) and some companies are deciding to bring that money back to the USA (voluntary).

Not sure what's so hard to understand about that.

Thanks, I don't get it myself. I guess simply stating what a bill actually does is going to have a hard time here on HN, if that bill has even a tangential connection to the current administration. It has become a holy war.

Again. Apple has said nothing about the economy.

We could be in a 1930's recession and it would still be tax-advantageous to bring the money back. Especially since Apple is tipped to use it for stock buy back.

Again, they don't have to bring it back - it was going to be taxed regardless. They could pay the tax and invest it somewhere else. They chose to invest it here.

Analogy: Anyone can open a cryptocurrency masternode [1] and get a several percent per month ROI, paid in that currency. I don't want to do that unless I believe in a given coin, however, because I must invest in and hold a large amount of the given coin in order to operate the masternode and get the return. Yes, I am being incentivized to do so, but it still doesn't make sense unless I believe in the underlying investment.

[1] https://masternodes.online/

The main reason for bringing the cash back to the US is to pay it out to shareholders. They couldn’t do that while it was overseas. Now that it’s taxed anyway, shareholders will demand their cut.

Maybe the shareholders “believe in America” and will invest their gains in the country. Or maybe they’ll stash most of it in tax havens. Nobody knows — but it’s disingenuous to argue that somehow 100% of the repatriated money will be invested when America’s wealthy classes haven’t been doing that previously either.

I'm not sure this is a very convincing argument to make. The underlying economic conditions have not changed drastically in the last few months or even years. The tax plan's effect on the economy is presently a projection. Apple's decision to repatriate this sum is a no-brainer: America's economic landscape hasn't changed, but the deal that was offered has changed.

Disregard the link with the confusing title and think critically for a moment. Do you really think the US government is forcing all companies to bring any and all profits earned and stored overseas back to the United States? That’s what you’re implying.

The US government is forcing all companies to pay a mandatory tax of 15.5% on all overseas profit that was designated as "indefinitely reinvested" under the previous tax regime. This is a mandatory one-time tax as part of a shift to a territorial system. Multinationals can do whatever they want with the cash, but considering that they've been lobbying government on a repatriation bill for over a decade specifically to be able to do domestic M&A, pay dividends, or do share buybacks, it's pretty obvious that all of that cash is coming back to the US. A business that wants to reinvest all their cash internationally is free to do so (and in fact the previous tax regime incentivized it), but they're going to be paying US tax on what they've accumulated so far.

Where the database that holds the dollar amount is located doesn't matter, what matters is where it's taxed and where it's spent.

The US government _forced_ the companies to pay this tax, that point is irrefutable.

All taxes are compulsory - "_forced_" - as you put it. Who would pay them if they weren't? However, they are free to invest it wherever they choose, and they have chosen the US. That is not "mandatory repatriation".

The repatriation tax holiday actually encourages corporations to hoard profits overseas until the next "one time" tax break. There was a repatriation tax holiday in 2004 also.

Prior to the bill passing, pretty much every single Democrat-leaning publication tried to spin it as an evil Trump/Republican plot to give Apple billions of taxpayer money, with the figure calculated based on the difference between what they'd pay if they repatriated all those funds at the full tax rate (which wasn't ever going to happen) and the amount they'd pay under the bill. If people associate this bill with Trump and the Republicans, it's because their opponents fought hard to make that association.

They fought this bill hard because the tax proceeds are being given away to corporations with a massive reduction in the corporate rate (along with other giveaways that benefit the wealthy such as lowering personal income taxes and raising the threshold for the estate tax), in direct contravention to their policy goals.

Had the Republicans chosen not to use this opportunity to go for broke while they're in control of Congress and the White House, they'd have Democratic support.

Its called job creation. Companies who benefit create jobs...

The $1B Reno datacenter expansion was announced in May of 2017. So it has nothing to do with cash repatriation really.

http://www.rgj.com/story/news/2017/05/10/breaking-apple-anno...

Apple has a couple of data centers across the us. The opening of one in Reno is not the new campus.

The stock market rally started on election day. Clearly it was not based on what Trump had done, but anticipated what Trump with a GOP Congress would do. The expectation of a large corporate tax cut was certainly there throughout 2017, and may very well have had a large influence on the Reno decision.

> The expectation of a large corporate tax cut was certainly there throughout 2017

No it wasn't. Most people thought that after the health care debacle that Trump would've pivoted to infrastructure. Especially given the tax cuts were so fiscally reckless which would've alienated moderate Senators like Collins or McCain.

> and may very well have had a large influence on the Reno decision

Apple has other data centres. They were largely driven by their own needs and not to do with macro economic effects.

> No it wasn't. Most people thought

What matters was what investors thought. And as a follower of the financial/investing news, there was very much an expectation of a large corporate tax cut.

> alienated moderate Senators like Collins or McCain

Both voted for it.

> not to do with macro economic effects

The size of the tax cut was certainly enough to significantly affect the economics of a datacenter investment.

"The size of the tax cut was certainly enough to significantly affect the economics of a datacenter investment."

So without a tax cut Apple would have just let users suffer? Hardly. Users drive DC investments, not tax policy. There's no tax cut in the universe that's going to get Yahoo to build a new DC in Nevada.

Investments are made if the cost<benefit. Reducing the cost (via tax cuts) means more things become worth investing in.

Any rational skeptic was couching their criticism that this was net loss for taxpayers, not a total loss. While Apple and others can publicly crow about new investment and jobs and give the president and GOP a PR coup in terms of their bill, you have to consider how much they were paid to do this. The dynamic score said that of the $1.5T in lost revenue, we will likely recoup about a third in new revenue. This will be a sizable amount of stimulus especially for companies like Apple that have enormous profits. If Apple are investing $30B in new capital, it's probably because they are being handed twice that much in tax breaks.

This might be the most brilliant tax plan in the universe. The president wouldn’t be any less revolting because of that. I’m not sure why you are connecting these two ideas.

It is true that the partisan extremism of everything leads to people irrationally hating everything someone does (or, as in this case, is loosely associated with), but that doesn’t mean the opposite.

This does not and should not wash this revolting presidency clean.

Amen!

You are very virtuous and your political opponents are very gross.

Yep, everything is Totally Normal™ in American politics!

I heard Stalin was good on taxes as well. There are bigger issues than taxes, my friend.

We probably disagree on the big issues too. I'm not gonna call you "revolting," though.

> I find it fascinating that a tax plan proposed by a President reviled throughout the Valley is the one thing that finally convinced Apple to repatriate much of its overseas cash and invest it here in the US.

Why is that fascinating? It's the tax holiday the tech megacorps have been asking for since the last one in 2004.

And yet nobody gave it to them until now, which resulted in trillions of dollars that should have been benefitting the US economy sitting unused in places like Ireland.

Let's say I thought I was paying too much in taxes, and now I'll pay less in taxes next year due to this tax cut. No one gave me that tax cut until now!

Nothing about that is "fascinating". You're trying to make a narrative out of "hey, we want this." "OK, here it is."

You'd have more of a point if you were trying to say that all the doomsayers were wrong about the downsides of a tax holiday and here's the proof, but it's a bit early for that.

You do know that the money isn't literally sitting overseas right? It is invested (Apple would be the largest bond fund in the world [1] if they accepted outside money). So they'll sell the investments, pay a little tax and then probably do a massive buy back of their shares and a special dividend. A little switching around on paper, but certainly not a stimulus of any sort.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-04/apple-buy...

Of course there is no Apple cash hoard, it's all invested. The difference is it being invested in foreign countries, or invested in America.

That's not the difference at all, it is invested in corporate debt (much of it from US companies) and giant amounts of US Treasuries. Even the people that manage it do so from the US.

The difference is purely in accounting, they keep that money on a different line of their balance sheet and are unable to use it for domestic expenses without paying tax on it.

Most of the money isn't going to move at all after they repatriate it (they'll actually sell Treasuries to pay... the Treasury!). No part of "bringing back" the money will result in more money being invested in the US--it's already invested here!

If it will be used for a "domestic expense" then it is being spent into the American economy.

Except those trillions of dollars were already benefiting the US economy by acting as collateral for huge loans and investments taken out by Apple stateside. Even with the deemed repatriation the money will most likely still sit in Irish bank accounts, and in certain cases escrow and PE funds, as it makes no sense to spend the time and effort to wire the money over to a US bank since taxes were already paid on it and renegotiating the banking deals alone would probably be more money than it's worth.

In general, from reading a lot of your comments, you seem to act like an authority on this issue when most of your statements sound like a freshman who just finished his macro midterm. If you actually read the lobbying documents and testimony from many corporations, this deemed repatriation wasn't at the top of their lists, and in many cases was completely unwanted. Even further, the republicans actually ended up with a much higher tax rate than what was originally agreed, 15/8 vs 10/7. Of course, this was offset by long term corporate tax decreases but many large multinationals vigorously advocated for no repatriation and just a tax change, or at the least a very soft repatriation holiday and absolutely no deemed repatriation.

Fortunately, due to things like "balanced budgets" and "deficits", the Republican caucus was quite literally forced to enact a "deemed repatriation" on offshore funds to make the corporate tax changes viable in the least. "Deemed" as in mandatory, which you so incorrectly refuted above in a different comment, because again, without it the corporate tax changes would have made the government unable to follow up on current monetary obligations. Some would, justifiably, call such a lenient deemed repatriation analogous to a soft holiday, but the overall point is that corporations actually took a small loss on this facet of the tax bill to gain a huge win in other parts.

The whole fight over repatriation was mostly a sleight of hand trick to captivate the public while making changes that actually matter to the more permanent corporate tax code. After all, Apple even stated a couple years ago they were using the money sitting in Ireland to help finance their upcoming (now finished) campus. Where the money is matters very little compared to where it's spent since dollars are fungible.

Saving this burn for later

Yeah, I wasn't aware that personal attacks were allowed on HN. And it's not just me, a quick review of his comments shows that virtually every one of them involves calling people stupid, naive, liars, etc. This guy should be banned from HN.

One of the better parts of this bill was the switch to a territorial taxation system so we can stop playing chicken with tax holidays. This is not merely a holiday, but is a permanent policy change.

> to repatriate much of its overseas cash and invest it here in the US.

Where in the article does it state that they will invest the repatriated cash in the US? The only concrete number is the $38 billion tax payment upon repatriation, which is a direct result of the tax plan. If you read carefully they state nowhere how much of the repatriated cash will be invested instead of simply returned to shareholders. They just added up what they were already planning to invest anyway in the next 5 years. It might have increased slightly with the tax cuts, but not a whole lot. They weren't constrained by cash before, only by meaningful investment opportunities.

Keep an eye on their quarterly and yearly reports to get the real story. I expect a large chunk of the repatriated cash will be used to pay off the debt they took on to finance past dividends and share repurchases. The rest will be used for future share buybacks.

Well, if it's simply returned to the shareholders, then the shareholders will invest it. Economy wide it makes no difference, the money will be invested

What makes you think they’ll invest it in the US?

Rich person/fund X will get a larger dividend than before, and they’ll invest in the same way as before. It’s not like this money is somehow earmarked.

If giving more money to the rich were the solution to America’s problems, it would have worked by now.

it shouldn't matter where they invest it. investing it in the US when the optimal thing to do is to invest it elsewhere is bad overall, regardless of which entity is doing the investing. World economy is not a zero sum game.

> then the shareholders will invest it.

Or use it for consumption. And that consumption or those investments are not necessarily in the US.

Where do you think that money is now? It's not like it is stored as dollar bills in some warehouse abroad. The 'repatriation' they are talking about is purely an accounting/tax fiction. If you look at Apple's yearly report [1], on page 49, it details how its cash and equivalents are invested. Most of it is in US treasury securities ($42 billion) and commercial securities ($131 billion). Repatriating it will not magically make it somehow more productively invested in the US. In some cases, quite the opposite: as a foreign Apple shareholder, any dividends I receive are spent outside the US.

[1] http://investor.apple.com/secfiling.cfm?filingid=1628280-16-...

well, that money does belong to shareholders. if they choose to spend it rather than invest it, that means they saw no good investment opportunities. Spending in that case is the optimal thing to do anyway rather than for apple to hoard it.

Its not fascinating. The contents of the tax plan were only known to corporate CFOs during the week of the vote, there hasn’t been time for due diligence since then to change direction of a top 10000 US company.

Any corporate announcement you read in january has been under corporate review at least since end Q3 2017.

> the one thing that finally convinced Apple to repatriate much of its overseas cash and invest it here in the US

That doesn't really seem too surprising. The previous administration tried to force them to do it, they refused. The current administration gave them what they wanted, they did it.

> If other US corporations follow suit with repatriation, the American economy will experience unprecedented corporate reinvestment.

Yes, but "corporate reinvestment" can mean a great many things. Endless rounds of share buybacks (as many CEOs have indicated they want to do) won't really benefit the broader economy (or actual citizens) all that much.

The repatriation isn’t optional, so you could say the current administration succeeded in forcing them to do it.

> a tax plan proposed by a President

The corporate tax changes weren't his idea - they have been kicking around Capitol Hill with more or less bipartisan support for years, and it almost happened while Obama was president. The full package of changes wound up being highly politicized and controversial, but the corporate changes were always seen as very likely to pass sooner or later.

They may have been kicked around the Capitol Hill for years but while (D)s had control of the presidency it did not happen. There was a time when (D)s had control of Congress, Senate and Presidency with Obama as a President and it did not happen.

To claim this tax cut is a result of bipartisan legislation is rather odd.

[Edit] It must be really painful to downvote reality.

They only claim bipartisan responsibility when the tax plan seems to do good for the country (billions of dollars in new investments, tax revenue, repatriation etc.)

He was pretty much the only finalist candidate that proposed cutting taxes, and not just by a bit, Trump by his nature wanted the greatest change

This is factually baseless nonsense.

Jeb Bush: https://taxfoundation.org/details-and-analysis-governor-jeb-...

Marco Rubio: https://taxfoundation.org/presidential-hopeful-marco-rubio-a...

You can compare all candidate plans here: https://taxfoundation.org/comparing-2016-presidential-tax-re...

In fact it was Ben Carson who proposed cutting the tax rates the most (corporate tax rate -> 14.9%).

I think you have your history wrong. Herman Cain started it...

Long term should benefit as well as the short term. The US had one of the highest tax rates on corporations in the world and all it did was cause the money to stay out of the country. Just like very rich individuals, when you are not bound to one country you can just keep elsewhere. The US even experiences it on a smaller scale with people moving from state to state.

Obama Administration did propose 28% in 2012 and get taxes for those under 200k down as well. The current plan that is in effect has a lot of similarities but it did not set a 200k high limit. The US really needs to figure out a way to handle small business taxes that get caught up in the way personal taxes are done.

Less tax burden is always a win. What the US really needs for explosive growth is a cap on spending. Many other countries to include a few European countries have rules in place to keep it below growth for a reason, because it pays off fast.

And all it took was another $1 trillion in deficit spending. Color me unimpressed.

This has nothing to do with the tax plan. It's a $5 billion additional investment in US operations over 5 years, most likely due to competitive pressures and regular business growth. If you want to thank anyone, thank Google/Amazon/Microsoft for forcing Apple to do this.

That $5 billion over 5 years is nothing for Apple, since they get about $100 billion in revenue each year from the US alone, with a large percentage of that in pure profit.

They don't need repatriated cash for this $1 billion/year investment.

It's a pretty small US investment, really.

That's why they spend their cash on dividends. Dividends basically means they a company has better idea on what to spend their money on than to just give it back to their shareholders.

Most people haven't given the real reason this is happening.

https://www.ft.com/content/789e69f6-e1ea-11e7-a8a4-0a1e63a52...

If it's behind a paywall the interesting part is:

> Senate and House leaders unveiled the final version of their tax reform legislation on Friday, putting the Republicans on the cusp of delivering tax cuts of close to $1.5tn. As part of the package they will impose a 15.5 per cent one-off tax on offshore cash, coupled with an 8 per cent levy on less liquid assets, a Republican aide said.

So the tax plan didn't convince Apple to repatriate it's money because the tax rates were amazing. The tax plan is causing Apple to pay 15.5% taxes anyways, so since it's being forced to pay taxes on it they might as well use that opportunity to move a lot of that cash to the US where it's more usable for them.

Chances are after this Apple (and all other megacorps) will go right back to storing cash off seas waiting for their next chance for another free chance to move money to the US.

I have a question : What is the difference between Apple paying taxes to Trump's Govt, which will make sure that the funds will be used to create jobs.

Apple getting all the money and using to create jobs on its own.

Once corporations have exhausted their large hoard of overseas cash, the amount they repatriate will go down significantly. So isn't this really just a short-term boost?

The idea I think was to lower the corporate tax in general which will also give companies an incentive to stay and pay taxes here. Don't know how that will work long term. Maybe it will, until there would be another tax haven country advertising a better tax deal.

Fortunately it's more elaborate than that.

Ideally the US begins stealing corporations and manufacturing from the rest of the world, whereas previously the flow had been going the other direction, with dozens of large companies abandoning the US for lower tax locations.

For example, the lower corporate tax rate, combined with very inexpensive US energy (cheap natural gas), makes manufacturing in the US even more appealing.

You don't have to beat all the other tax havens, you just have to get low enough to be competitive on the overall value proposition. The UK is at or going down to 17.5%, that 3.5% variance with the new US rate becomes mostly meaningless as an issue (17.5% vs 35% however is a drastic gap).

A short term domestic investment for a long-term tax benefit. The headlines made immediately after the new legislation is passed are what will stick with people the most.

I'm not saying this is definitely the case, and I would love to be proven wrong. I just don't see how a tax cut would have corporations scrambling to return jobs to the U.S., instead of having both a tax cut AND cheap foreign labor.

No. These types of investments don’t simply wash away - they go to building long term value for the corporations that make them, which creates good jobs, demand for housing, etc. Further, as long as this tax plan remains in place, corporations will continue to allow international profits to flow back into the US. Even if Trump is unseated in the next election, given the positive reaction among corporations to his tax plan, it may be politically impossible for the next Administration to return to punitive tax rates despite their predilection for them.

The USA has moved to a territorial tax system for corporations, so any income earned abroad will no longer be subject to US tax (only taxed by the country where the income was generated), and so can be freely moved back to the USA if the companies wish. There is no longer a distinction to be made concerning where money can be spent without being US taxed.

There was little distinction before as companies could borrow against their overseas cash to invest in the US

They would still have to pay those loans back out of their US income (or any income repatriated). Bankruptcy would be weird, in that case.

Apple is a one of a kind company. In my opinion, I don't think most US Corporations are concerned with the needs of the many.

And you think Apple is? Why?

Apple is a significant percentage of the economy all by itself.

What do you think a "significant percentage" is? Is it 10%? 1%? 0.005%?

I wouldn't call it a "significant percentage", but by a straightforward calculation of revenue/GDP shows that it's about 1% of the US's economy.

> I find it fascinating that a tax plan proposed by a President reviled throughout the Valley

Not quite. The proposal has been on the table for years. The difference has been how to use the proceeds from repatriation. Republicans wanted lower corporate taxes. Democrats wanted something else. This wasn't new, it wasn't unique, and it wasn't Trump. Believing this was a plan proposed by Trump ignores history and facts. Sure, he signed the bill into law, but the same thing would have effectively happened had Democrats been in charge instead of Republicans.

> but the same thing would have effectively happened had Democrats been in charge instead of Republicans.

Wasn't that the case when Obama was first elected? And yet, it didn't happen. They've kind of painted themselves into a corner with the "the rich and corporations aren't taxed enough" rhetoric, not sure how they'd successfully sell a corporate tax holiday to their base.

The buck stops with the President. If the GOP Congress won't work with the President, it's the President's job to find a way to get enough of them on board. LBJ was a master at getting "impossible" legislation through Congress, so I don't believe it was impossible for Obama. I suspect this is where his inexperience in politics showed.

An example of this was outlined on Frontline a few years back. Obama crafted a bill, and included a number of items the GOP said they wanted. He then presented it to the GOP, and was surprised when the GOP soundly rejected it. This is a failure of Sales 101, in that it was set up so Obama would get the credit. Of course the GOP rejected it. A craftier technique is to invite the GOP to write those sections of the bill themselves, and give the GOP the credit. Same bill, but totally different approach.

Again, the buck stops with the President.

Obama also failed to fulfill many appointments, including a Supreme Court Justice. What, in your opinion, should he have done differently?

He should have read one of the many biographies of LBJ where they go into considerable detail on his career of getting impossible things through Congress.

All he needed was to peel off a couple GOP Congressman - surely he could have found a way to do that given 50 of them. Political parties are never a solid block of commitment, there are always waverers and members who can be manipulated with the right carrots.

As I mentioned in the antecedent, he made serious persuasion mistakes in dealing with the GOP that pretty much guaranteed failure.

Obama's first step would be to accept responsibility for the task, rather than blaming the GOP. Blaming the GOP only served to diminish Obama's political capital.

(Remember Clinton outmaneuvered the GOP with the "Contract with America". Obama could have consulted with Clinton.)

No contest. I'm a big fan of Robert Caro. Wish I'd read more about politics (and biographies of the players) before I got involved.

And what about Mitch "We'll oppose any bill put before us, even if it's good for the country (yes, he actually said that), in order not to let Obama have any victories" McConnell?

That wasn't a failing of Sales, that was an opposition who was willing to harm themselves, and the country, to not give any leeway.

Politicians are always emitting pompous gasbag statements and promises for public consumption, and then make a deal the next week.

Can you provide a source for your quotation?

I have legitimately spent fifteen minutes trying to find a source, but I haven't managed yet in Internet searches, lists of "ridiculous quotes" from McConnell, nor Wikiquote.

Thank you.

BTW, just as the Dems made a mistake in not getting any Reps on board with Obamacare, the Reps made a mistake in not getting any Dems on board with the tax cut.

Of course, dubbing the bill "Obamacare" was a virtual guarantee of no Republican support. The Dems should have worked hard to name it something more inclusive (and more catchy than "Affordable Care Act"). Marketing matters!

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